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Matt avoided the large, reused Amazon box, which arrived via his mother. The second box of childhood items he’d received, as noted from the black sharpie written on the side: Matt’s stuff - box 2. The box remained next to the first one, for he hadn’t bothered to bring either into the post-divorce apartment any further than the three-by-five tan-and-white linoleum square that acted as a foyer. The boxes sat for days as he had no rush to dive into the past, not with the present a huge fucking mess. The humble apartment tried, but nothing hid the dreary sadness under the layers of paint and the putty-patched holes. Even Palm Meadows’s exterior, once a gorgeous teal color vibrantly shining along the shore of North Lake Never, was now faded, dull, and lifeless. Officious grey air conditioners jutting out from the windows pockmarked its complexion. There’d not been one smiling face at Palm Meadows, but Matt hadn’t expected to see any. The building was a transitional place for people dunked into the lowest points of their lives as if nothing more than an off-brand cookie—Palm Meadows, the cheapest, easiest place to rent on short notice. Management didn’t care about background or credit checks. All they required: one reference, which they didn’t actually call, and the first and last month’s rent, along with the deposit. No questions, no niceties, pay them and get the key. The apartment stood not as a warm and loving home, but a dreary low-watt cell in which Matt merely existed instead of thrived. The haze he’d been functioning within couldn’t be called living: barely eating, either not sleeping at all or sleeping all day, dragging ass to work where most days he phoned his performance in. His time bled together so much he couldn’t tell what day of the week he was on. Remaining on the couch, or in bed, or pacing the small one-bedroom where he counted the numerous holes sloppily patched in the apartment’s walls. Matt hadn’t asked for his life to change; the change occurred despite his best efforts, and he refused to accept it. The issue wasn’t that his husband couldn’t keep his gorgeous black cock in his pants—Clark couldn’t—but Matt reconciled with that fact long before they married. Both were open, and the sexual openness worked for them. Matt believed the freedom gave their relationship legs, eighteen years' worth of them. Terence and Dylan were a couple they’d known only briefly, friendly enough, and they claimed to have no interest in playing around—which made the fact Dylan crawled onto Clark’s cock a month later all the more interesting. Matt hadn’t minded. Before they met up, Clark informed him what would be going down and even showed off the videos he’d made afterwards for them to enjoy. And while Matt assumed nothing in life, he felt assured enough in the stability of his relationship that he would never hear the words, “I’ve been having an affair.” And yet those five words arrived anyway, slapping Matt across the face like he owed them money. Dylan couldn’t keep the tryst quiet, and Terrence kicked him out, ending their five-year relationship. Dutiful Clark rushed to the rescue and consoled Dylan with much more than his erect penis. For five months, he kept the truth of playing boyfriend with Dylan a secret from Matt. Five months in which they were off on movie dates, sleepovers, early mornings spent in bed while Matt woke up alone believing Clark was traveling for work. The betrayal rocked Matt to his core. The sex never mattered, but having his husband share the genuinely intimate moments of their married life with someone else while professing to still love him proved to be a firm steel-toed kick to the groin. The whirlwind of emotions Matt dealt with was held together by the thinnest strands of hope. Hoping somehow the situation was a mistake, nothing more than a momentary hiccup. He believed Clark wouldn’t throw away their eighteen years so easily, except he had. On top of his admission of the affair, he informed Matt he would move out, so their separation could begin. And like that, the dreaded D-word arrived anyway. Crushed like a beer can in a drunk jock’s hand, Matt cried as Clark spoke about ending their marriage as if it were nothing more than a business contract needing amending. The state required one year of separation before the divorce would be final. Matt left instead. The idea of spending morose-filled days wandering around a house still fresh with memories held no appeal. Packing his things, he resisted the urges to be petty and destroy shit on his way out. However, for a moment as he cleared out his side of their walk-in closet, he considered channeling TLC’s Left Eye and torching Clark’s prized shoe collection in the garden tub. But a burnt-down house couldn’t be sold and its profits be split. What balance would come to the situation if he broke the antique clock in the hall? Or heaved one of those fucking pampered shoes into the plasma TV? He’d still be miserable, and Terrence would still be getting to sleep next to Clark at night. Matt’s head wasn’t clear as he boxed up things, and much got left behind. There would be a time to fully divide their items, but Matt hoped when that time came, he wouldn’t care enough to want anything. With fourteen boxes and a backseat full of clothes, he glanced back only once at the renovated, four-bedroom split-level house with a perfectly manicured lawn and said goodbye with a middle finger high in the air and tears filling his eyes. The cramped 700-square-foot apartment on the fifth floor of Palm Meadows acted as home now. And within it, most of Matt’s days found him awash in depression mourning for Clark, his home, his carefully refined routines. All of them were rudely taken from him, and their sudden loss slammed into him hard as a meteor, leaving a crater so deep in his soul, Matt’s sadness would echo within it forever. The sun rose and set, and Matt wouldn’t have moved from the bed. He felt numb and broken the first few weeks, remaining motionless upon the mattress tossed on the floor. He stared up, watching the shadow of the rickety ceiling fan glide over him as the day passed him by. The apartment’s needs forced Matt out of bed and into the land of the living. Wanting the shopping to be over with as quickly as possible, he picked whatever was available, deliverable, and, more importantly, cheap as hell. No color palette selected, no debate over swatches for the walls, and no need to overspend; Palm Meadows wasn’t a new palace to fill with treasures. The apartment was a blip in his life, one he had to endure, and whatever he purchased would suffice until the blip passed. Once all the pieces were delivered, he stood in the space looking at the mix-matched furniture sets. Along with the messy bedroom and the half-assed set-up of the entertainment center, the apartment carried all the unflinching echoes of his first place. At twenty, he could laugh off poverty by referring to his meager abode as Bo-Ho Chic. A lifetime later and TV trays were once again substitutions for a dining table, side tables, and his nightstand. His plates and bowls were paper, utensils plastic, and swiped by the fistful from Chipotle whenever he got dinner. At forty-two, the apartment stood as a guttural reminder of how hard he’d been drop-kicked to square one. And unlike in his youth, no amount of blinding optimism would help delude him that the situation was only temporary. For more than a few Palm Meadows residents, Matt saw their blips—which also started off as temporary—had morphed seamlessly into a comfortable acceptance of the way things were. One of the ‘lifers’ introduced herself in the laundry room on his third night there, her story the same as Matt’s except gender-swapped. Her plan mimicked his own: stay a year, refocus her life, and move on—she’d been there ten. Matt tried to shake off the boozed-up woman’s story, but the clinging stench of his own possible future hung all over him. Would he be in the laundry room in ten years, hacking his way through cigarette after cigarette while pouring out his sob story to some new resident trying to wash their underwear? The more he dwelled on thoughts of being stuck in Palm Meadows, the more horrible outcomes he envisioned for himself, and the more morose he felt. The traffic in his brain was relentless. There couldn’t be one thought without spiraling off into two more, and each one of those branched off into endless directions of possibilities, worst-case scenarios, and questions upon questions upon questions: did he need to start looking for a new house? Would a condo or townhouse be better? What could he afford? Did he need to look for a new job with a higher salary? The savings took a bigger hit than he’d been expecting. Did he need to wait until after the divorce? Should he move back home to Florida? What were Clark and Dylan doing? Were they sleeping in his bed? Was he getting Clark’s homemade Sunday-morning brunch? Were they fucking every night? Matt couldn’t be sure where to begin rebuilding his life, still so deeply entombed in the rubble of his old one. The longer he concentrated, the more pissed he became at himself for feeling secure enough to never think of even the simplest contingency plan. And should he start forging a new life solo, on his own terms? Or should he wait and find the next mister to build something with? He’d not begun thinking about when he would start dipping his toe into the dating pool. The idea made him tense, nauseous, and uncomfortable. The single world wasn’t the same one he’d navigated twenty years before. There were new rules, new games he didn’t understand, and there were no shows about single forty-somethings trying to have it all to relate with. To everyone else in his circle, since Clark moved on to someone else, Matt should have been out mounting dudes, two at a time, nightly. Except in Clark’s case, he got to glide past all the breakup unpleasantness thanks to the blinding newness of Dylan and him playing house. But for Matt, there was no distraction from the marriage and the life being grieved. There’d be no dating. No random hookups. No responses to friends who were pushing for him to get out there and reclaim his power. Matt found no satisfaction in drowning his sorrows within some nameless person’s flesh. Maybe if the situation were different, or if he were younger. His hurt ran deep. Sitting up on the couch, he fought his brain to stop hounding him with the same thoughts he’d carried around for nearly a month and a half. His gaze drifted around the apartment, from the TV hanging alone in the sparse, cold living room, past the open kitchen, and to the front door, settling on the boxes. Matt tried to shake the stiffness out of his body. A conversation with his mother was planned for later that day, and the boxes were bound to come up. The boxes posed a possible distraction from the nonsense in his head, even if only for a few minutes. Muting the TV at a loud commercial, he reluctantly rose to a chorus of pops and groans as his body ached with every move. No one talked about the pains the body felt during depression. Rain pelted the balcony’s sliding glass door as grey clouds, which had hovered in the sky all day, finally made good on their promise. A full-on downpour started when he set the two boxes on the coffee table. Plopping onto the couch, he pulled the coffee table closer and unmuted the TV. The silence of the apartment affected him, like a toxic, stealthy ninja. If he were in his house, however, the quieter, the better. His silent days were among his favorites during the week. Wandering around the house without the television on or music playing so he could enjoy the safe, meditative calm of his warm and loving home. The same safe quiet did not exist in the apartment; it was a deafening quiet. A depressive and deceitful quiet, if unchecked, would force him down a flume ride of negative thinking. The TV or a playlist remained on 24/7. Tearing open the first box, he found a card from his mother. Time Heals All the outside said in an overly cheery floral font. On the inside a handwritten note: Time will, love, I promise. Until then however, here is some of your old crap. I wanted to throw it away, but Dad says you’ll love it for the nostalgia. I think it’ll make you feel old and like shit—but either way, the closet in our newly remodeled gym is now clean! Time to do my Jane Fonda. We love you, son—Mom and Dad. And he loved them right back. His Caucasian mother and Puerto Rican father were his own version of Lucy and Ricky; they were cute together, endlessly loving, and always cracking him up. Telling them about Clark and the divorce broke his heart. His father flew into a tirade in Spanish, which his mother tried to simmer. And Matt found himself spending most of their phone calls lately trying to stop the ranting or his mother’s crying. Avoiding the subject altogether proved impossible. Missing them, he decided to stop delaying, diving into the first box. A glance at the television showed the same weather advisory scrolling over the news, which regurgitated the same mess from the morning: politics, global warming, the tragedy at a cancer clinic, the horrible messes occurring elsewhere in the world. Life-affirming content if he ever heard it. No one needed a constant reminder of a world turned to shit. He wondered why he’d flipped on the news at all. His fingers pressed against the aged cardboard of an old shoebox first. Flipping the top over, he found the inside filled with mixtapes labeled ‘Radio Jams’ written in Matt’s youthful and evolving handwriting, dated ‘93 thru ‘99. An uninvited smile showed up to the party, marking the first appearance in weeks. Matt hadn’t recalled the collection of tapes until he opened the shoebox, and instantly, he remembered the hours upon hours he’d spent making and listening to them. Over and over in his room, getting excited once a tape filled, and time came to open a new one, label the cassette—the best part—and then pop the tape in his stereo. He patiently waited, listening for his favorite songs, and he worked hard at making sure he got both the front and the end of the song without the annoying DJ talking. Pirating music used to be a delicate practice which took skill. Ready to revisit each one, he became excited at the possibility of the songs hiding on them, perhaps a chance to recapture some of the joy they had brought him in the past. Matt looked up, expecting to see not the apartment’s meager entertainment center but his own living room wall neatly organized with his fully packed audio system set against a plush collection of greenery. The apartment had only the newly purchased fifty-five-inch screen staring at him crookedly from the crisp, white wall. He missed his digital surround-sound stereo system, complete with tape deck, turntable, and many speakers. They were at the house, waiting to be fought over in the mediation room of some overpriced lawyer’s office. The tiny flicker of joy, ignited despite all odds, found itself extinguished. If Clark hadn’t been a lecherous asshole, Matt would be settled in at home on this gloomy rainy afternoon. Comfy in his sweats and on his overstuffed couch, happily popping in tape after tape, enjoying his audio-guided trip down memory lane. Even his car didn’t have a tape deck anymore, and the possibility of revisiting the trove of songs got shoved aside with a defeated grunt. He refrained from glancing in the box, deciding instead to allow whatever came out next to surprise him as the tapes had. Another shoebox appeared, this one taped shut. Instantly, he recognized his teenage private-time box. Ripping off the aged tape, he recalled most of the porn stash once stored within was removed. Left behind were reminders of the pre-internet age, a deck of nude male playing cards he’d stolen from the Spencer’s in the mall. There were three muscled hunks on the front, which made the deck appear more exciting than they were actually, but in ‘95—before the evolution of smartphones—any image of a naked dude caused a queer teen boy’s excitement. He’d sneakily slid the deck into his pocket and raced from the mall with high hopes for when he got home. Only when he did, Matt discovered the cover’s hunks were merely bait, and the cards were filled with lesser models. He utilized them once and never again. Next to them, rolling around, were two small black plastic film containers with grey lids, another relic. Matt popped them open and sniffed the faint scent of the cannabis they once housed. Now the herb had legality, and he could walk down to the dispensary whenever he wanted. In ‘97, things weren’t as easy. He held the film canisters in his hands, remembering the nights he would roll a joint with a friend, smoke till they were silly, and sometimes even fool around. He tossed the containers into the box; weed was medicinal now, helping to alter his mood and ease his anxiety so he could avoid harsher pharmaceuticals. But the flower was still a good time. The last item, a collection of notes rubber-banded together, made Matt’s heart skip. He refused to touch them as if they were hot coals. Nothing in those old letters from his first boyfriend, Jerome, held anything he wanted to revisit. Matt thought he’d gotten rid of them a long time ago. He closed the shoebox’s lid; reading them would only evoke painful memories, even after all that time. Despite appearances, Matt had found himself very much in love, but Jerome never tried to be a real boyfriend. He’d used Matt for sex, pretending to want more the whole time, before leaving the state without even a goodbye. Matt had been devastated, as the crushing pains of first loves tended to do. Once a trove of hot, hidden sex, the simple shoebox was the birthplace of Matt’s type, his kinks and preferences and now as frigid and empty as his own bed. He crushed the box in his hands, the decades-old cardboard collapsing easily as Matt dropped it to the floor, stomping down for good measure until he kicked the crumpled, beaten thing into the kitchen. He’d throw it into the trash later. Matt took a deep breath and checked the rest of the box: his graduation cap and gown, the tassel, junior and senior yearbooks, which he opted not to go through. A memory book filled with photos of him and his friends at the time, movie stubs, receipts from various outings and dates, and personal polaroids he’d taken of Jerome whenever he stayed the night. Again, nothing warranting a revisit. His mother’s card had been correct; the box had failed at making him feel nostalgic. As she’d accurately predicted, the items made him feel like shit. They represented a past that now felt further away than ever and reminded him of how alone he was. Those friends weren’t around anymore, not to call up and talk to anyway. His current friends were still debating whom to remain close with, him or Clark. And Clark appeared to be winning the votes. Better to not be reminded of those years anyway, no matter the good times; whenever he reminisced, he found only the bitter loneliness of being heartbroken and struggling as a queer youth in a world that fervently refused to accept him. Now he considered himself a relic wandering through a world he no longer recognized. Where had the world he’d grown up in gone? Where tape decks were commonplace, and youth hadn’t faded? Every day, more of the comfortable world died, and he’d been okay while safe in the bubble he’d created with Clark. But comfy bubbles burst harshly, and now the truths of the world beat him down. His thoughts were spiraling. Why had he bothered to open the damn thing anyway? He set the first one on the floor, giving the box a firm kick, wanting to destroy it too. Deciding against such actions, he scooped the box up and hid the offensive package in the hall closet where it’d be forgotten about until the time to move. Matt hovered over the second box, feeling the dull ache of sadness swell within him. Jerome, the tapes which couldn’t be played, the good friends who time and distance took away—all sucked the will to keep moving forward from him. And under his hands, a second box waited to be opened. He figured since he already felt shitty, why not go all the way? An excellent justification, though one was hardly needed, for hitting the bottle earlier. The storm raged outside the sliding glass door as Matt tore open the second one and dug in with less excitement than he had the first. His fingers grazed what took him a moment to realize was a video game controller. Feeling the cord wrapped around the controller’s curvy structure, the pad and the buttons. His hand gripped the controller like a gun, and his finger found the trigger underneath. His thumb placed itself over the joystick, and instantly, he knew the feel of his favorite sky-blue Nintendo 64 controller. Withdrawing it from the box and unwrapping the cord from around the body, he handled the vintage controller as brighter memories cut through the cloudy anger of his mind. The controller happened to be a holy relic from what he’d dubbed the ‘Summer of GoldenEye.’ Seventeen and unconcerned with encroaching adulthood, he and his friends were obsessed with the game. Playing nonstop into the early hours of the morning, Matt won nearly every match—attributing the victories to his special blue controller. His muscle memory activated; his hand slid into position as if about to play. The sounds of gameplay, his friend’s defeated moans, the controllers being thrown down as shouts of ‘fuck this’ filled the air. The shots being fired, the James Bond theme-stinger every time someone got popped, all the noises ricocheted in his ears as if he were standing in Tommy’s game room. An odd but familiar smell hit Matt’s nose, and he had no trouble identifying the persistent body funk of four teenage boys holed up in a garage-turned game-room in the central Floridian heat for days on end. A sugary, slightly toxic flavor bubbled on his tongue, and he cycled through his memories trying to place the taste. He recognized his then go-to soda, Surge. Gallons of the stuff were consumed that summer and a few years after until he graduated to coffee, but the taste awash in his mouth was eerily identical. Those gaming days and nights were the only good times during that summer, as the relationship with Jerome ended, and his being closeted meant there was no one to talk to about it. Within a second of the intrusive thoughts of Jerome and his past melancholy hitting him, the Surge, the body funk, and the sounds evaporated. Matt found himself wishing the oddly tangible memory hadn’t faded so quickly. There was comfort in the feeling that he was once again in Tommy’s garage. He wouldn’t have minded staying a little longer. Shaking himself out of the vapor of the memory, Matt found himself slumped down halfway off the couch, positioned awkwardly as if sliding off to go sit on the floor and play a video game. His hands were wrapped around the controller, geared up to win. Straightening himself up, he set the controller down on the coffee table, swearing to himself the Floridian heat remained in his apartment. By the time he scratched an itch on top of his head, the heat left. Reaching into the box, Matt uncovered a time capsule of the ‘90s beneath an excessive amount of packing paper. A TalkBoy voice-recording device from the movie Home Alone 2, a few random broken action figures, three containers of old, dried-up Gak Splat, Nickelodeon’s signature slime. A pink Tamagotchi with a long-dead battery. An unopened bottle of Vanilla Orange Orbitz. Matt chuckled at the find, looking at the murky drink with its dulled orange flavor balls still suspended within it two decades later. He’d saved the drink believing the bottle would be valuable like a Beanie Baby; a quick eBay search showed him otherwise. Matt set all the items aside for an Instagram pic once he was done—#90svibes. He looked at the state of his youthful items, at one time so loved, and now reeking of desertion. Rooting around the box again, Matt stopped when his finger caught a jagged edge. Whipping his hand out, he cursed loudly, bringing the injured digit to his lips, unaware the tiniest droplet of blood splashed onto the carpet. He pulled the finger away and found a thin cut from which a minuscule drop of blood tried to push its way out. Frustrated by the stinging pain, Matt tilted the box down, ready to unleash a brutal retaliation on the culprit until he found the white VHS case. It was called a clamshell, a large white case mainly used at the time for Disney movies. The corner broke off at the right angle to create a refined, sharp edge. Shoved in the box vertically, he removed the clamshell and found Sleeping Beauty. The pain in his finger ceased as if a switch flipped. His mind, a constant blizzard of to-do lists, worries, and regrets, quieted down. Delicately, he turned the case around in his hand, thinking on how he had not held the cassette in nearly twenty-plus years. Before the day he set the movie down—never to pick the thing up again—it was one of his younger self’s most prized possessions. Sliding his excited hands across the front cover, he flipped the case around, scanning the words written on the back. The vacuum-formed plastic and cardboard creaked when he handled it. Long before romantic comedies and hour-long medical dramas ruled Matt’s viewing hours, his go-to was always Sleeping Beauty. From the night his father brought the movie home, Matt claimed the film as his favorite. He reminisced how after their dinner, they’d settled in and watched the movie. And from the moment Matt’s deep brown eyes greedily took in the image of the gold bejeweled book opening to start the story, he’d been hooked. Tumbling the clamshell around in his hands, he marveled at how much smaller the case appeared now he was older; in kid-sized hands the box appeared gigantic. The case’s spine squeaked when Matt popped the clamshell open to see the black video cassette snuggled comfortably in the plastic housing. The film was rewound, which didn’t surprise him as he’d had a rewinder, a machine whose sole purpose was to speedily rewind tapes. Closing the clamshell, he ran his fingers over the vintage cover art, which changed four times over since then, but he’d always been fond of the original. Disregarded in a box for years, Matt knew the case was nothing more than a cold, inanimate thing—and yet the clamshell radiated warmth through his hands. A warmth which crept through him. During every mild cold, heavy flu, and one horrible bout of chicken pox in ‘89—in which the movie ran a record eleven times in a row—Sleeping Beauty never let him down. Even as Matt grew older, as his tastes evolved, the film remained steadfastly his favorite. He didn’t want to put the case down, wishing to keep the clamshell close to him like a security blanket. Only when the itchy spot on his head once again clamored for his attention did he set the movie on the couch’s armrest. The itch burned hot for a moment and faded rapidly; he assumed a bug had bitten him but didn’t pay attention to anything other than the flutter of excitement within him. An idea sprung up. Perhaps he would get to watch the movie. Before getting too excited, he slammed the brakes on that line of thinking. Not even his amped-up entertainment center at the house had a VCR anymore. Reluctantly, he returned his attention to the box, but with one hand firmly secured around Beauty. Inside, he found a couple more movies: the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, two of the X-Men cartoon series tapes which came with his personal pan meal at Pizza Hut, and a blank VHS tape with no label. His fingers worked like miners desperate to get a hold of a diamond as they dug through more packing paper until stopped by a large solid object. Matt felt a plastic casing, and a tinge of excitement rose. Pulling the item out of the box, he found his initial assumptions correct—a VCR. Matt let out an excited gasp when the a/v cables were connected and dangling from the back. Figuring, like the Radio Jams cassettes, he’d been robbed of revisiting a joyous moment from his youth, he paused the cheering section in his head. Lately, the world shit on him at an unprecedented rate and showed no sign of easing up. He forced himself to assume the VCR wouldn’t work but found himself corrected once again when everything tumbled into place. Despite the television being a recent model, the necessary ports to connect were there, and within a minute, Matt stared at a familiar blue input screen, smiling as if it were an old friend he’d not seen in years, which in many ways was accurate. The blue screen meant nothing to anyone who’s existed solely within the digital and streaming era, but for those with a little vintage to their souls, the blue screen meant something fun was about to start. Matt hesitantly proceeded; always a chance the machine would eat the tape within its innards before the movie could even begin. Or the video could be old and worn and snap. VHS was a great, albeit flawed, technology. The squeak of the clamshell opening gave him another rush of warm feeling, genuine excitement for the first time in weeks. The fact the film would be in full-frame and lack the clear quality of Blu-ray didn’t persuade him to stop either. Beauty was responsible for making some of his loneliest, saddest days feel brighter throughout most of his young adult life. Matt believed the movie could lift him up again now as it did then. Removing the cassette, he paused, thinking of how much had changed since the last time he’d held the tape. How life moved as fast as a bullet train, and yet he hadn’t honestly noticed until he’d been kicked off. Saying a silent prayer to the Tech Gods, Matt pushed the tape gently into the VCR. The plastic tape’s noise sliding past the machine’s front flap, the video being loaded as the whirring heads spun to life, were sounds not heard in years. Their noisy vibrations hit Matt’s ears and reverberated through his whole body like a bouquet of tiny orgasms. The blue screen switched to black as the word ‘Play’ flashed in the upper corner before a red-colored FBI warning popped up within the TV’s center. Tiny light distortions appeared, and after a moment, he recalled the tracking often needed adjusting. They were cleared up by the time the opening credits started. When the Tchaikovsky overture began, Matt’s body relaxed, overcome with a full-bodied tingle as jovial waves crashed upon him. The endless back-and-forth in his mind, the cacophony of bullshit his brain insisted he think about, simmered down as he bounded into the kitchen with a couple half-hearted pirouettes. He laughed out loud at how uncoordinated his limbs were. Swooping his hands through the air, they danced along to the score. He grabbed a bottle of vodka from the freezer. His socks allowed for easy spins on the kitchen’s scuffed-up linoleum, so he spun. Plucking a glass from out of the sink, he kicked out his left leg in another faux ballet move, as he poured the vodka until the glass overflowed. Not caring about the spill, he playfully attempted a few more sloppy moves before parking himself on the couch. The golden bejeweled book, which he credited for making his young queer self even gayer than God initially intended, opened to begin the story. Matt kicked the now empty box off the coffee table as he threw his feet up. Taking a sip, he swished the vodka around, relishing the icy-cold burn before swallowing. Though the drink hadn’t been real, the phantom Surge lingered in his mouth. Matt didn’t take long to settle in, and after a few sips, he became lost within the film’s exquisite imagery. His favorite moments weren’t until further in when Aurora appeared, and while he had affection for all the princesses, Aurora was the one who’d won his heart. At his parent’s house, a photo album sat on a shelf gathering dust, containing nothing but pictures of Matt, from age seven to well into adulthood, posing with Aurora at Disney World. He envied her. Aurora had the sweetest deal of all the princesses: life in a pretty cottage in a beautiful forest with three fun aunts, animal friends, got to nap through all the drama, and woke up to snag the man of her dreams. Clark had been Matt’s ‘Prince Phillip.’ And on cue, the momentarily eclipsed sadness returned. He found this time the thoughts were curiously swished away by an unseen hand, as if whipped up to say ‘shoo, not while Sleeping Beauty is playing.’ And the idea ready to strike him next—that there were no princes left out there for him—also vanished. The powers of Sleeping Beauty were working to make Matt feel better, as the film proved to do throughout his whole life. As Maleficent made her dramatic entrance, Matt was bummed the scope of the evil fairy’s fierceness wouldn’t be fully acknowledged in the chopped-up, pan-and-scan format, which forced her widescreen glory into a horridly confined square. The film’s colors were muted and dull, the details in the background unclear, as was the villainess’s face. A pristine Blu-ray copy sat on a shelf at the house, part of the collection he hadn’t bothered to sort through. Before the thought could drag him into melancholy, the unseen hand rushed in again, clearing the negative thoughts away and ushering in one from the past. There were rare moments in childhood when all the elements conspired to create a memory magical enough to withstand time. For Matt, the moment fell on the night of their inaugural viewing of Sleeping Beauty. His parents, still young, were cuddled up on the couch behind him while he sat on the floor in front of the TV. One of his butter-covered hands shoved in his favorite blue bowl, digging out the M&M’s mixed into his mom’s fresh-popped popcorn, his other around a cup of Kool-Aid fruit punch as he smiled wide-eyed at the screen, and they all enjoyed the movie. A genuine, loving family moment, the kind advertisers so often tried to replicate. A shot of the castle, and the pool of warm nostalgia he’d begun wading in turned cold. Aurora’s castle held the honor of being the centerpiece of Disneyland in California, and three years into their relationship, he and Clark flew out there for a mini vacation. After an epic, picture-perfect day, they stopped in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and Clark dropped to one knee and proposed. Matt felt himself about to lose his thinly achieved mental peace. No part of his life remained unspoiled by that callous sonofabitch. There would be no escape from—his thought vanished midsentence. Taking another sip, he found what met his lips and washed over his tongue was not vodka. A saccharine shock of fruit-punch-flavored Kool-Aid flooded his mouth. Surprised, he swallowed and found the taste identical to how he recalled the drink as a child, not how the drink tasted now since ingredients and recipes changed. Confused, Matt looked down at his hand to make sure he still held his vodka, except the glass was no longer there—instead, a plastic cup. A remarkably familiar white tumbler covered in cartoon figures who were being worn off from repeated washings. Confused, he glanced up at the movie, and his attention was snatched away from the cup and mysterious drink. For over twenty minutes, the film resided in a dull, low-res prison which betrayed its true beauty. As the woodcutter’s cottage appeared, Matt’s eyes were saturated by vibrant and stunning colors emanating from the screen. The picture was crystal clear, as if the animated cels were freshly painted and barely dried for his viewing. Every detail, down to the various hues used within the background, was clearly distinguishable. Closing his eyes, Matt pinched the bridge of his nose, questioning how much he’d already drunk that day when the sound of popcorn popping forced his eyes open. He turned his head, expecting to see his apartment’s tiny, outdated kitchen. The kitchen was gone. Matt floated in disbelief, knowing full well he sat inside his shitty apartment. Yet there in front of him was the brown swinging saloon door which led to the kitchen of his childhood home. The image of the door appeared from the exact angle he remembered seeing it most vividly, his spot on the floor in front of the TV. Matt found himself oddly unmotivated to delve into why he saw the kitchen from his youth or why Kool-Aid and not vodka filled his glass. A rising feeling of contentment blotted out his curiosity despite its best efforts. Whatever magical thing resided within the saloon door and hid in his drink conspired to calm him from the inside out, ushering in comfort unlike any he’d felt in years. The muscles from his feet to his head were relaxing; the tension burrowed deep within them was being escorted out by a cresting wave of comfort. Upon hearing the opening musical cue, his eyes darted to the screen, not wanting to miss a second. “Once Upon a Dream” started as Aurora took a stroll with her animal friends, singing about a love she’d only dreamed of. The part Matt adored most: the beautifully drawn forest with its tiered terrains and tall, box-shaped trees. To him, the art depicted heavenly perfection. A forest that with every viewing he wished he could step into and spend the rest of his life within. Questions were rattling around his mind, a slew of them in fact, but their volume had been turned down and drowned out by the movie’s audio, which grew louder. Matt’s focus remained on the film, while the stress was redirected away from him. With eyes intently focused, his right hand shifted from its resting place in his lap to his side, where he expected to feel the cheap microplush of the couch, only to find carpeting. He undertook a mammoth effort to pry his attention away from the lovers dancing and singing for two seconds to glance down and see he no longer sat on the couch. Matt found himself cross-legged on the floor in a sea of wall-to-wall brown shag carpeting. The white tumbler still in his hand. The aroma of fresh buttery popcorn crept into his nose as the salon door swung on its hinge as if someone stepped out, and the simple action of the door swinging released another wave of calm throughout him. For a moment, watching Phillip on screen reminded him of Clark, and as rapidly as the intrusive thought wiggled in and tried to destroy his calm, it vanished. Matt brought the cup to his lips, not noticing the blue cuff of his Masters of the Universe pajamas around his tiny wrist. Or the TV, which no longer hung on the wall with cords hideously left dangling under it, but sat on the floor. Not the sleek flatscreen, but a wooden floor console housed within a thick brown cabinet with three ornamental knobs along the bottom. As a child, he often pulled on the knobs, pissed they wouldn’t open to reveal the secrets he believed they held. His eyes, wide as he enjoyed the colors radiating from the red coat and Beauty’s hair, drifted past the screen for the briefest glance at the wall behind the television. The dim white paint melted away in patches, replaced by cheap wood paneling as the apartment’s wall faded from view and the one from his youth emerged in its place. He still didn’t register anything as odd when he reached next to him without looking and dove his hand into a familiar blue plastic bowl. Filling his small hand with buttery popcorn, Matt tossed the kernels into his mouth and welcomed the slightly warmed chocolate candies mixed within them. A combo of flavors which had not danced on his tongue in a long while. Matt couldn’t break the trance to turn behind him and see the yellow, flower-patterned couch with wooden armrests on which a young version of his parents sat. But he felt them there as he had that night, sensing their loving eyes watching him wipe his buttery digits along the front of his pajamas as fairies fought over colors. Trying only once more to look around, to take in all 360 degrees of his childhood living room, which brought him an avalanche of happiness by sitting in again. A gentle pull on his chin redirected his focus toward the screen if he tried to stray too far from the picture. If Matt turned around, he would have seen no old couch, no wood paneling, and no loving parents. Only himself sitting in the solitary loneliness of the apartment—and the entity which floated above his head most of the afternoon. Matt settled in. No longer pressed to turn around or take in every detail of the living room, he let comfort wrap around him as snugly as a thick, weighted blanket. Onscreen, the kingdom celebrated their princess’s return, and Matt no longer felt his age-related aches and pain hounding his body. The traffic jam of thoughts smoothed out until the highways in his brain were empty. With no more worries consuming him, Matt released the last of his mental restraints and submerged fully into the sensory overload the childhood memory set off within him. There were innocuous moments in life—which could not be replicated or ritualized—where cosmic elements entwined so flawlessly, becoming so incredibly potent, they could be felt in the beyond. Matt inadvertently found himself in one of those moments when his depression, acting as a cauldron, mixed his anxiety, anger, and the deep, aching sorrow which clenched a hold on his soul. A powerful blend, which created a beacon to those residing in the darker realms. The ones who remained eternally hungry. The unnamed thing waited on the outskirts of reality like an insect buzzing around a porchlight. It was not alone—they never were. A box of cassette tapes provided a spark of nostalgia, and the entity proved itself strong enough to squeeze through the tiniest of fissures and into the apartment on the fifth floor of Palm Meadows. Floating in the air above Matt’s head, the entity, not much more than a murky, greenish-brown blob of pulsating membranes, shuddered as it forced itself back to full size. Under the umbrella-shaped dome, the creature’s body stretched only a mere four feet long, tiny compared to the others who’d been waiting. But with each pulse of its body, a collection of two-inch-wide tentacles developed. At first, hundreds pushed their way out of the muscular edge along the underside of the dome, stretching down ten, twelve feet until, like the strands of a beaded curtain, they filled the living room. At the top of the crown, a leathery tether protruded forward. Affixed to the end, a bony, two-inch-long, corkscrew-shaped fang—a lure, which dangled over the center of Matt’s head. The creature exerted enough energy to dive to the floor once before propelling itself in a slow spiraling ascent around Matt, who remained oblivious to the horror encircling him as he dug through the boxes. The entity’s growing numbers of tentacles grazed across Matt’s skin, becoming excited, until the creature returned to the ceiling and remained lethargic, waiting for the perfect timing. The hideous thing did not perk up again until the discovery of the controller. As Matt flipped the device around and started recalling the memories attached, the tether drew taut. The bony fang shot down, inserting itself into the center of Matt’s head. He felt nothing except the itch around where the fang broke his skin. From the fang’s hollow tip, minuscule spines were pumped out. They inched forward like determined ants through the thick grey matter. Nostalgia proved to be a powerful vibration, one strong enough to pull a ravenous creature into our world. And when those spines reached into the deep lobes of Matt’s brain, their sharp ends tapped into the inner workings even we do not fully comprehend. His nostalgic memories became weaponized: Matt tasted Surge in his mouth. Heard the video game’s soundtrack in his ears. Felt the sticky heat of a Floridian summer on his skin. But the garage memory had too many distractors which succeeded in ruining the illusion. The creature remained attached, but floated motionless above him. When Matt discovered the clamshell, the creature sensed his brain activity light up. Childhood memories were the best source of untainted comfort. A comfort—when accepted fully—would seduce Matt enough to keep him docile. The spines were anxious to press down but remained still, awaiting the command, knowing a filling meal took prep and patience. A struggle played out, for the unnamed thing expected Matt to succumb easily, as most people did. But his stubborn mind kept pushing away happiness and comfort, unwilling to accept them, seemingly preferring to stay miserable. The creature countered every attempt to break the seduction, ushering away any intruding thoughts as they arose. It dove deeper into Matt’s memory of the inaugural viewing, capturing the finite details needed to orchestrate the vividly realistic hallucination as if it were a conductor. This memory would be deep enough to remain uninterrupted. He accepted the drink on his tongue and the olfactory triggers the creature threw at him. When Matt reached into a bowl that wasn’t there, to snack on popcorn which did not exist, the entity believed Matt was in deep enough. The patient creature held off for one more beat, needing to be sure Matt fully accepted the seduction. If not, what occurred next would become far messier, and expend more energy, than the creature cared for. The kingdom onscreen fell under the same sleeping spell as their princess, and Matt’s eyes were glued to the scene unfolding. Around him, and now in the hundreds of thousands, the tentacles stiffened up and readied themselves. When the signal came, the arched tentacles snapped forward, enveloping his body. Matt felt only the amped sensations housed within his memory and not the tiny, circular mouths clamping down onto every square inch of his body. No matter how remote or small an area, a hungry mouth sought a space out and affixed itself. In unison, the ravenous mouths began their race to burrow through Matt, for within each slime-covered tentacles’ mouth were dozens of razor-sharp teeth spinning like circular saws. And in their center, a boney hollow tongue, liquefying the viscera being viciously torn from Matt’s body and sucking it up. They tore through his clothes, skin, muscles, and bone, and all while he remained entranced. Not a drop of blood or a single, stray piece of flesh escaped their hungry mouths. As they chewed through him, the tender organs went to the lucky few who got through the body cavity first. Matt believed he reached for popcorn, scooping up a few kernels and a couple pieces of chocolate. The taste filled his mouth as he licked the buttery stickiness off fingers which were no longer there. They’d been feasted on minutes before. The mouths continued their path through his palms, working their way up to his arms. He smiled as Phillip fought the dragon—but there were no longer any lips. He ate popcorn while the tentacles ripped apart his tongue, dissolved his teeth, and chewed through his lower jaw until nearly a third of Matt’s face had been masticated by the time the dragon fell to its death. If the creature were some natural thing, we would gaze upon its dietary habits in awe, marveling how speedily and efficiently this demonic jellyfish devoured its prey. But this was not nature; this foul monstrosity and the revolting display of the entity eating could only be met with abject horror: the figure of a man buried within a sea of tentacles and who’d already been devoured from the waist down. The reunited couple danced around the grand ballroom as the film’s happy ending unfolded on screen. Matt loved Aurora’s dress switching colors from pink to blue as she danced. The overwhelmingly happy ending with its swelling, joyful score and the magical color-swapping dress captivated him more than any other part of the film as a child, and remained so upon every subsequent viewing. Except Matt no longer viewed the movie through his actual eyes. A swish of her gown and the dress became blue as the tentacles ravaged his chest. The dress turned pink, and six of the mouths wrapped around and finished off the toughest muscle, Matt’s heart. Another spin and the dress turned blue, and the last remnants of his skull were cleared away, leaving only his brain. The brain was always dessert. But first, as if to admire the mysterious tangle of nerves and electrons which animated human bodies, the creature allowed the brain a moment to simply be. Letting the three-pound organ, still tethered by the fang, float in the air within a sea of circling tentacles, devoid of its body—but still operating. The moment was ever so brief before the mouths descended upon the brain with renewed vigor. The bejeweled book closed on the screen, ending the story. As the film stopped, the VCR activated the auto-rewind, sending the heads spinning wildly. The video tape’s rewinding filled the empty, silent apartment on the fifth floor of Palm Meadows. Matt was gone. Not one piece of his physical body remained. Not a drop of blood left behind, except for the one which escaped his finger earlier. The unnamed thing slithered out of the world through the fissure it’d entered and retreated to the darkest corners of its realm, digesting a filling meal while already seeking the next. Eric David Roman spent twenty years wandering the wrong paths; he tends to get lost a lot. Working the wrong jobs (hey, I did things for the money...and the shame) and avoiding his true passion, writing. After finally escaping retail management hell, he focused on his mental health and his writing (well...I do as much as my gAyDD allows). He is the author of the outrageous novella Despicable People and the queer-horror slasher Long Night at Lake Never. Eric remains forever socially distant in Northern Virginia where he lives, loves, and writes. He's a cat dad (but I'm not like a regular cat dad, I'm a cool cat dad) and loves all things horror, camp, and queer.

Connor sat on the park bench beside Ann’s wheelchair, watching the ducks on the lake. They looked peaceful; their lives simple. “If they feel unhappy, they can fly away to somewhere else,” Ann said. Connor stood up and stretched. He imagined himself as an eagle with a six-foot wingspan. “Fancy a slice of chocolate gateau with your coffee, my chickadee?” he asked in his Groucho Marx voice. Ann kept staring over the lake’s waters as if she hadn’t heard. Connor waited. He knew what she was thinking. Finally, she spoke up. “I know you insisted on return tickets, but I’m staying.” Connor blew his nose into his large, white handkerchief. “The appointment isn’t till two, let’s wait till then.” Ann said nothing. “Shut your eyes,” Connor ordered, “I have a surprise for you.” Then he leaned over the wheelchair carrier and removed Ann’s handbag. He opened it and took out her eyebrow pencil and make-up mirror. When he had finished, he called out, “You can open now.” He did an exaggerated Charlie Chaplin walk, working his charcoal eyebrows up and down, and twirling an imagery cane. Ann laughed as he knew she would. Connor went down on his haunches and kissed her lips, held her. “I’m ready for that cappuccino now,” Ann whispered into his ear, a sad smile in her voice. * Connor sat in an aisle seat on the midnight flight from Zurich to Dublin. He cupped Ann’s ashes — hidden under a blanket —on his lap. He could feel her there, lending him her strength. She was not gone. She would never be gone. As the flight attendant talked over the intercom and pointed out emergency exits, Connor bowed his head and tried to return to that state of calmness he’d experienced by the lake. He thought of how he had fed Ann tiny morsels of Black Forest Gateau, of how they had sat by the lake and dozed in the mid-morning sunlight. But it was no use. Exhaustion took over his body and he slept without resting, turbulence threatening to dislodge Ann from his tired fingers.

“Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.” — Allen Ginsberg I look down and see a smiling cut, layered like an onion; a red streak. I don’t know how it got there, but it stings. Dunkin’ doesn’t have any lids, so I carefully balance the coffee in my hands, making sure I don’t soil the books at the store with whipped cream and sugar. I use Saunders and Wallace like a yo-yo—up-down, up-down. The man beside me coughs into the crux of his arm, a habit we have all become accustomed to. The lone man in the waste land of letters, deciding between T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath. I don’t think he’s ready for female pain. He won’t chew on it. Empty of an iron stomach, he fritters away, down the stairs, and out into the breeze. My sunglasses are a bee-stung amber with black Pollock dots. They all know. I know they know. It’s in their hands, and their twitching fingers. They all see I’m faking it. Every step I take is followed by counting. One. Two. Three. Put one foot in front of the other. That’s it, just like that. We’re all pretenders here; sheets of mirage, skin tight. It’s not a persona, just an enhanced version of ourselves to get us through the day. Two men in black suits smoke Marlboros outside the Rolex store, and a woman in Louboutins walks by, leaving a cloud of Chanel No5 in her wake. I, with my long coat, move through the galleys and passageways with those unidentifiable cuts. Ten years ago, I imagined chatting to older men in wine bars, wearing luxury perfume and solid gold. I’d scratch at their back with my Miu Miu manicure—talking timeshares. A couple opposite me is showing an offensive amount of PDA. Aside from making me feel nauseous, I just want someone to give me a head massage. He would have, but he is dead. It took me twenty-three years to finally find a man who loved me, and I lost him the same year we found each other. Now, every time I see affectionate couples, I am permanently reminded of what was once in our grasp. I stave off puking and grab my Pumpkin Spice Latte from the dirtied marble. No sweetener is needed, for once in my life. I’m a stickler for honesty, but some days, you just want to play Barbie. Back in high school, I was deep in sad Tumblr core; listening to Lana Del Rey on my iPod Classic. Lana is still on every playlist on my iPhone. I must’ve played Born to Die on a loop thousands of times. If my life was to be narrated through one song, that would be it. She follows me everywhere. On the outside, it would appear that I was trying to be a coquette with red eyes, but in reality, I am genuinely sad. Not only am I grieving, but I float around in some ironic sense of angelic anarchy that I don’t know who I am anymore. Mental illness is like colonoscopy prep; in order to consume, it must have a fruity flavour. Those of us who know, know this is true. I picked up a copy of a Rachel Cusk novel, and it was nothing but the ramblings of a ‘90s Kate Moss archetype. Some of you might call this unfair, and feel free to tell me so, but if there is one thing I hate in Literature, it’s the mad-woman-in-the-attic who lives in Camden stereotype who can eat all she wants because she always stays thin. I do not doubt that the prose itself is sublime, but I baulk at this consecration of the Effy Stonems of the world. Standing in line for fresh donuts, I check my phone for significance. Reading a Substack about “being in your fleabag era”, the guy on the street sings Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin. I take the brown paper bag, but the stuffing comes undone—white flies of sugar dropping on my coat. How dark must it be to notice the pinholes? I contemplate getting another coffee; caffeine is my lover, my sin, and my soul. Then I’ll go to bed. Then I’ll rest my head on the peachy silk. I’ll fall asleep to girl in red, and the maggot will replenish, sloughing off my skin like a snake with amethyst scales. Courtenay Schembri Gray is a Northern writer of the weird, the eerie, and the macabre. She is the author of The Maple Moon newsletter on Substack: https://themaplemoon.substack.com.

Awakening the bed shifts as we turn pastel sheets draped trailing to the floor like statuary a show of modesty overthrown the sun dazzles away all secrets I can feel every ridge of your fingerprints on me my hands are hungry too gorging on your skin, its heat your silky hair and rough heels even my nails vibrate with your pulse as I drag them gently so lightly across your ribs one by one a ladder my fingers stepping up and down your breath so sharp and fast Valentine We live within each other moored in time as mussels anchor to black rock. Valves open / shut / open Oils on your fingertips transfer to my skin— startling in the light, we tuck and turn in nests. Word is body is water. Grit in cuticles. Ardor and expectation. Trees blown sideways, green fronds are ragged shrieks of joy, echoing through the streaming heat. Anniversary back at home after 4 years we are broke from moving and no work and injury and stress and have no money for gifts but it’s our anniversary so we have to celebrate even though we can hardly pay for the gas to get us to the restaurant and we have not one but two kids now and one of them can’t even eat real food yet but we have a lot to be grateful for a lot to put in a toast but this restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol which is a bit of a relief in fact because we can get a cheap bottle of wine at the grocery store and drink it at home later so we go up to the glossy cream colored counter and order anything we want but definitely the combo meal because you get more bang for your buck and I want the crunchwrap supreme combo with a diet pepsi and he gets the burrito supreme combo with a sierra mist and we decide to go crazy and get some nachos with plenty of fire sauce and what the hell a bag of cinnamon twists too which means we will definitely be too full to have sex but it’s totally worth it and we will have many more anniversaries and we are most definitely in a happy place right now we love each other so much we don’t even mind sharing bites of everything and the kids are quiet for once and happy with a quesadilla and a bottle of formula respectively so it’s a pretty good anniversary, actually. Throne we stride down 7th Avenue eyes seeking my landmarks only quickly as if our eyes might freeze in place I keep hitting home, my hand in your pocket we enter climb up to grey third-floor through windows the flaking-orange fire escape to sit & drink wine good spirits over the city the wind lifts our hair & fingers through our scalps chiding our lack of woolly hats & scarves dripping fringe preening pavement sparkling with frost March is nearly over near & distant windows blink at us through violet haze in the evening, lovers & office workers heading home we pause in reddening sun, feel the city spinning as though from far off & I feel your heat my hand on glass feet on steel you are silent absorbing this home we breathe together a glory full of unspeakable Siân Killingsworth (she/her) has been published in Roi Fainéant Press, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), & elsewhere. She is the Anthology Editor for the Marin Poetry Center, host/curator of the Second Sunday Readings series, and a poetry reader for the Kitchen Table Quarterly. Find her on Twitter: @sianessa and @2ndSundayPoetry, and on Mastodon @sianessa@sfba.social.

Before when my mother is pregnant with my father’s first wish and second blessing, he doesn’t know how long the cab ride she called for will last. only that home was wherever she was supposed to be. and he was supposed to be with her. and she was supposed to give him two sons. and men are supposed to raise their sons right. and he was a man. he knew that by the way he loved Her. a free ride I imagine. in exchange for a number of course- the pager I found in his living room during my adolescence glowing during what was his present. back when the dance was just that. a pointed toe. sharp enough to cut a rug and nothing else. not ties. not a landline. not a vein in two. Amnesty one man’s trash gets lost in an ocean swallowed by a balloon bellied beast that regretted waking up this morning. I looked in the mirror and cat-called my forgetfulness. my reflection called me homeless. told me to find a park bench. a city eclipses a pillow at night. a backpack can look cozy when there’s nothing inside. everybody wants somebody to be emptied. we laugh at those who aren’t full. how convenient for spiked driveways. what a life it must be to hold the key to a chastised tongue. it’s okay now though. I’m told if I starve now, it’s because I didn’t have a sharp enough weapon. I wasn’t big enough. everyone and everything else was way louder. I smacked when I chewed anyway. I needed a spoon. there was no spoon. I should’ve brought my own plate. Brittney Griner Is Waiting To Be Free and I wonder what a hoop dream looks like from the exact spot you shoot to escape from. overseas a Black woman is detained for vaping. I called off work this morning, sick from binge drinking. the night before I let myself be held by a man I swore hated me. somewhere another one, straight, in his principles and lifestyle isn’t shouting to bring her home but how me and my lover aren’t doing enough for her existence. I wake up having nightmares. wishing I was somewhere else. a benz can’t take me where I want to go. once upon a time I believed my dreams could. some would say I am cinematic the way holes burn through my end credits in dark rooms and low crowds. Lebron recently starred in a reboot of a child/hood classic and I ponder the price for Britney’s nostalgia- a useless man telling me because I know myself at best all I do, no, all I can do. is dance. Joshua Merchant is a Black Queer native of East Oakland, CA exploring what it means to be human as an intersectional being. What they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of loving and what it means while processing trauma. They feel as though as a people, especially those of us more marginalized than others, it has become too common to deny access to our true source of power as a means of feeling powerful. However, they’ve come to recognize with harsh lessons and divine grace that without showing up for ourselves and each other, everything else is null and void. Innately, everything Merchant writes is a love letter to their people. Because of this they've had the honor to witness their work being held, understood, published or forthcoming in literary journals such as 580Split, The Root Work Journal, Anvil Tongue Books, Spiritus Mundi Review and elsewhere.

My wife and I were imprisoned long before I thought of us as criminals, and these days I commit petty crimes in pajamas while working from home. So do millions of others who’ve helped eliminate the threat of arrest. Cops are now forced to pick their battles and focus on the dark web while misdemeanor shoplifting is accepted. I never imagined stealing anything when the fear of getting caught in public still applied, but with the click of a mouse, it’s movie night for free. Before we were sent to work from home, my wife and I lived in a constant photo shoot for social media. We’d share pics of our food and check our likes while eating, having gone from sharing sunsets and the beautiful greenery of our local bayous to every moment we spent together. A Saturday afternoon at the French Quarter made for some good posts showing the Spanish architecture, but St. Pete beach in Florida used to be our summer spot, and there, we’d capture the ghost white sand, the calm blue of the gulf, and our sunny smiles. We’d catch rays while checking likes, our minds elsewhere until the last visit when a younger married couple with a little girl and German Shepard planted their umbrella near ours. The wife took “Rowdy” by the leash and ran him through the shallow water and back while her hubby made sure to capture the show on his phone. She’d stop and do another take. Stop. Do another take. When their daughter wanted help building a sandcastle, the wife fussed at her for being selfish before leaving her to cry and doing another take with Rowdy. An awful sight for sure, but to my wife and I, the blessing in disguise that woke us up to the reality of our imprisoned existence. Like an attorney during discovery, my wife put the facts on the table. We were slaves to our phones and likes, or lack of, determined our moods. We panicked whenever we misplaced our phones, and our conversations were always focused on the posts of others. Wasting away, we were spending our lives trying to prove our happiness to those doing the same. Only together did we stand a chance at relearning how to live in the moment, and like two alcoholics disposing of bottles, we deleted most of our apps. Sheer boredom had us watching Family Feud. We didn’t say much while eating at first, but after a week of playing Scrabble, conversations between us were happing again. We even fell in love with ‘The Feud after guessing most of the answers. We’re no longer on our phones at home or in public, and with gas prices so high these days, we don’t go for many drives. We still use one app to have food delivered, never having to interact with another person until my wife calls to complain about a “messed-up order” that wasn’t—her arguments usually settled with a full refund or a significant discount at minimum. I’d raised the question of morality the first time she pulled this off and my wife threw our free movie nights in my face. We’re justified, she’d said, and she didn’t see me in the wrong for participating in piracy. She’d pointed out how corporate movie theaters had stolen from our pockets for decades with concession and ticket prices that should’ve been criminalized, and how food delivery services were now attempting to do the same with so many fees. She’d have made a great attorney. Thanks to Alexa, we dance on Saturday nights to any song we want without having to dress up or run tabs at clubs, but we make damn sure to unplug the blue glowing sphere when we’re not making requests. Who knows who’s listening these days? Or watching? I can’t click my mouse without ads popping up for products I’ve already purchased from other sites. Those first few months working from home still feel like yesterday. My wife and I no longer needed permission to use the bathroom, and it was fine if we took five or ten to decide on a lunch menu. We could step away from our desks to catch up on each other’s day or walk our dog down the street, but my employer is attempting to eliminate my wiggle room with a new rule, now requiring me to click my mouse every sixty seconds. I’m being reduced to a cog in a cold machine seeking robotic behavior, my living in jeopardy unless I meet the bottom lines of those above me making poor decisions. I’ve tried exploring opportunities with other employers, but my age doesn’t seem to be trending and thoughts of working in public again have sent me into panic attacks. Forced to sit like a child, memories of wanting to lash out come back to me. Do I take some control back and blow my brains out myself before the machine decides I’m no longer relevant, or borrow a page from the shooters and aim for those who’ve wronged me first? My wife doesn’t share my problem and keeps telling me to chill. Her employer still treats her like a human being—at least for now—but after witnessing my struggles to sleep and breathe, she’s put in the time to discover a loophole. Surprise delivery: USB drives with auto-clicking technology that can’t be traced. At least for now, my wife assures me, and I believe her. I believe I’m safe and still free—at least for now… She’d have made a great attorney. Nathan Pettigrew was born and raised an hour south of New Orleans, and lives in the Tampa area with his loving wife. His story “Yemma” was recently awarded 2nd Place in the 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition and appeared in the winnow. Other stories have appeared in Deep South Magazine, Penumbra Online, The “Year”Anthology from Crack the Spine, Stoneboat, and the Nasty: Fetish Fights Back anthology from Anna Yeatts of Flash Fiction Online, which was spotlighted in a 2017 Rolling Stone article.

CW: Hell, death, demons, alcohol. When we entered Hell, we got these little printouts that justified our damnation. The demon handing them out told us not to look at them until we got to the debriefing room. The people who looked at them anyway were set on fire, which was a great incentive for the rest of us to do as we were told. To stop myself from looking, I did deep breathing exercises and tried to imagine the pattern of a peacock's plumage. This proved to be a rancid choice of imagery. My girlfriend, Penelope Chiu, loved peacocks. On our last date before I died, we’d spent hours trailing peacocks at the Prospect Park Zoo. We gave them names and elaborate backstories, then went home and made out under her peacock-print blanket. I was never going to see Penelope again. I bit my lip and tried not to think about it as we were herded into the debriefing room. It looked like the kind of conference room where you have meetings that could have been emails, except that the board was oozing cyan slime, and the boss leading the meeting was an 11-foot demon with blood-red skin and goat horns. Part of me was still in shock - it's not like I was expecting a drunk driver to send my body flying across 5th Avenue. I didn't remember dying. Part of me still felt like I was late to meet Penelope for coffee. If you'd asked me before I died whether I'd be going to Hell, I might have jokingly told you that I was, but I wouldn't have meant it. I didn't even believe in Hell; if I had believed, I would never have thought I'd led a life deserving of eternal torment. Was it because I didn't believe? Everyone looked equally ill at ease. Some people were looking at their papers, while others pwere just staring at the ground or straight ahead with haunted expressions. A few people were whispering, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Finally, someone spoke out loud. A freckled woman with curly red hair shouted, "There's got to be a mistake. I've lived a good life! I haven't done anything to deserve going to Hell!" "Check your paper," the goat-horned demon said. “But—” "Check your paper!" I'd also lived what I thought was a decent life. But I drank Coca-Cola even though I knew that Nestle's shady business practices had starved thousands of babies to death in South America. I only gave money to homeless people sometimes, not because I didn't have it or didn't think they deserved it, but because I was too lazy to pull out my wallet. I'd been to fourteen different countries knowing full well how bad air travel was for the environment. I thought about those things when I was alive, but I never thought enough to change. Any one of those things could have bought my ticket to Hell. Was that fair? I didn't know. I wanted to hear why the red-haired woman had been condemned before thinking about my own reason. After a few seconds of sputtering, the woman finally checked her paper. She read it out loud. "God attempted to hit you with lightning on 12/13/2007. You went inside a Starbucks and spent seven extra minutes telling the barista about the cat you were going to adopt from the local shelter. God thought you would only take three minutes doing this, so They released the lightning early." She bit her lip and furrowed her brow. "That can't be right," she said. "Are you serious?" "Everything on your paper is absolute," said the goat-horned person. "God tried to kill me and failed, so I have to go to Hell for it? That’s totally unfair.” A man with a greying handlebar mustache waved his paper in the air and shouted, “I killed someone while driving drunk, but my paper says I’m in because my son downloaded a Hoobastank album on Limewire. This must be a mistake.” My stomach twisted. Was this man the one who killed me? I couldn't remember. Whoever it was, I knew I didn’t want them to burn in Hell. I wanted them to get home safely to their family. I wanted them to get help with their drinking. To live a good life. Why, if I was the victim, couldn’t I have that? “No mistake,” said the demon. I wanted to punch them. A woman wearing a Sailor Moon T-shirt and horn-rimmed glasses squinted at her paper and wondered how she could be getting sent to Hell for not going to Iceland. “God didn’t tell me to go to Iceland,” she said. “If I’d known God wanted me to go to Iceland I would have gone.” The demon shrugged, their many wings lifting with their shoulder. “In 1988, you heard an advertisement for trips to Iceland. That was a message from God.” “I was born in 1989!” “Yes - your mother was listening to the radio. You had ears by then, you could have heard it.” Someone got in because they killed a mosquito that was supposed to give their brother Lyme Disease. Someone else got in because his mother was supposed to go to Hell, but she was accidentally sent to Heaven so he has to take her place. The noise level was rising, so I decided to take a look at my own paper before I couldn’t process it anymore. Sweat collected in the dip of my collarbone, and my heart sank like a wrecked ship. I didn’t want to see my entire existence boiled down to a stupid technicality. My paper, which was folded and wrinkled with nervous energy reads: “Caroline Romero, DOB: 1/14/1994, DOD: 6/20/2018 On 5/9/2015, you began dating Penelope Chiu. Two weeks prior to this event, God sent Joel Ploskett to your workplace at Uniqlo. He asked you out while you were folding clothes. You rejected him. God intended for you to marry Joel, and give birth to five of his children. Each of those children would have had a different type of deadly tumor. God wished to observe the development of these tumors. This defiance of God’s plan has earned you an eternity of torture in Hell.” My vision was replaced by electric fuzz. If God wanted me to marry a guy who spent 45 minutes sexually harassing me while I was working and couldn’t leave… If God wanted to use my body to gawk at human suffering… If God didn't want me to feel the awesome power of my infinite love for Penelope… If God was punishing us for defying a plan we weren’t informed of… if God didn’t care about the things we’d actually done wrong… then God deserved to be here, not us! The demon pressed a folder into my hands. “This is your torture assignment and schedule,” they said. “Please look through all the provided information, and then let me know if you have questions.” Before I had the chance to stop myself, I slapped the folder onto the ground. Everybody quieted down and stared at me. “I’m not staying here. Nothing about why we’re here has anything to do with our moral quality. None of us have done anything to deserve eternal suffering.” I thumped my chest, wincing at how hollow it sounded. “There’s got to be an exit somewhere. If we work together, we can find it. Who’s with me?” Sweat waterfalled down the small of my back. Who did I think I was, spouting nonsense like that? I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where the exit was. And what was I going to do, overpower all the demons? In life, I was lucky if I could drag myself to the gym once a week. But no one seemed to think it was nonsense. They shouted in agreement. They started throwing around ideas. “I think I saw an exit earlier!” said the woman in the Sailor Moon shirt. “It was on fire, but if we can find some water we might be able to use it.” The demon insisted that there was no way to escape Hell, but nobody listened. Instead, they rushed out of the room. I tried to join them, but there were too many moving bodies. I was almost knocked over before a man with a wiry beard and a lavender down vest yelled, “No stampeding! We might be dead, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be orderly!” “That’s right!” shouted a person with pink cornrows and spiderweb earrings. “We don’t want to risk dying again and ending up in Super Hell!” Everyone started to walk slower, with purpose. The demon sprouted leathery wings and tried to fly in front of us, but we just plowed past them. They shot fire at us from a forked spear, and we started running, but this time we were paying attention to where everybody else ran, too. Nobody got trampled. A few people got burned, so the larger members of the group stayed behind to pick them up. I found myself carrying a baby, who clung to my hair and howled into my ear. More demons swarmed the entrance to the conference room, trying to stop us as we marched forward. A teenage girl with ice-cream printed overalls and massive muscles doled out roundhouse kicks, while an equally powerful old man picked up demons and spun them over his head. No matter how many demons appeared, somebody fought them off. Sometimes, it took five people to deal with a single demon - they were two or three times our size, and they had weapons and fire. But we kept fighting and we kept running, and when someone couldn’t run anymore someone else picked them up. We had surrendered our individuality to become an invincible collective. One that could find the exit. One that could sweep through enemies and make sure no one got left behind. After what felt like hours, we got to the exit. Unconscious demons littered the landscape. Half of us were limping and some of us were being carried, but none of us were on the ground. The exit was a wreath of flaming rock, and we had nothing to put it out with. We started talking about where to find water, but before we could come to any conclusions, the burning rocks began to collapse. I leaped backward, arms crossed over the baby’s head. The rocks blocked the exit completely. It sizzled, then disappeared. The baby was sobbing and I felt like sobbing too. I had just been transformed into a single cell in a powerful, purposeful animal, and now our purpose had been thwarted. New waves of demons would be coming soon, and we’d have to submit to fiery torment. I didn’t want that for me, or for any of the souls that I suddenly loved like family. I knew that escaping didn’t mean seeing Penelope again, but oh, part of me had hoped… “You,” said the man in the lavender vest. “What’s your name?” “Caroline,” I croaked. “Caroline, you inspired us to escape. Can you inspire us to take the next step?” “Come on, that’s too much pressure to put her!” said the woman God couldn’t kill with a lightning bolt. I wasn’t sure why this was my job, but I’d been trusted with it. I needed a minute - to wipe away my tears and rub the baby’s back until they quieted down. I needed a minute, but I would speak. “We’ll look for another exit,” I said. “And if we can’t find one, we’ll find a way to survive Hell together. We’ll fight off any demons who try to mess with us. We’ll protect each other. We’ll find food together, or figure out how to grow it. We won’t let anyone be tortured. If we have to stay here, we’ll make an afterlife worth spending eternity in — one where our loved ones will be happy to meet us. Are you with me?” Everyone’s fists flew into the air except for one person’s - the man with the handlebar mustache. “Caroline, I think I killed you,” he said in a tear-stained voice. “It was an accident, but you shouldn’t be here. I deserve to be punished. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t care. He was sorry, he was forgiven, and now he had work to do. “What good will torturing you do?” I said. “We need your help to build the future. We need all of us.” Anna Lindwasser is a freelance writer and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been published in Bridge Eight Press, (mac)ro(mic), and Selcouth Station, among others. When she's not writing or teaching, she's volunteering at the local cat shelter and drinking way too much tea. She can be found on Twitter @annalindwasser and at her website annalindwasser.com.

I’m weird, I say into saltine-air: dry, and untasting. I forget what I used to like to do, when I’d envelop boys and come back for more, or find tulips in the residue of shifting Seasons. I can’t turn on the heat, I almost say to my therapist, But I don’t. I shiver, instead. There was an almost-fire last year: the firemen came And said “oh shit”, when the flame sparked and culled and beckoned to engulf The overhangs, the portraits my dead grandfather made, And the cuckoo clocks, with the tongues split open On the hour. But I lived through it. I still thought it uncanny That a fireman would swear, For they saw fire and flame All the time. But they did. A flamingo has to eat with his head upside down, or he refuses. He’s weird, too. All pink and tilted like a clock at half past six– And I wonder if I get vertigo, too. When I shuffle down grocery stores looking for exits, When I quit jobs that don’t serve me, but often because I’m too afraid – anymore – to feel connected. I’m safer unmoored: paddling, wading, waiting for the next Flurry of feeling to grab me. A lover at my throat, but gently, A petal waiting to be picked. A dolphin only turns off half its brain to sleep; It needs the rest to scour the sea. When I curl up with a weighted Blanket, as heavy as the moon waxing pretty, as light as the way we devour each other’s names as they are said in winter air that will not last forever– I, too, keep half my nerves for safekeeping. Wondering where you went– If you, like me, scour the sea at wintertime, Wondering if you can break the ice. Cracked and fissured, Alone and somewhat pretty, Looking for me with your scarf wound tightly, the northern lights cooing quietly, A lullaby in the way I wind myself up, in the ways I cannot stand the way I flee from all of this, from you, From ice-fishing travels where you must leave land to feel anything but frost. From my spiraling thoughts, the way I even loathe myself into a froth – sometimes – Too. I’m safer at sea than with me, I’m a constant plea, lost and unchanging. I’m salt streaks & cascading winds. I’m To remain upside down, stricken, Wintery & opaque. My locks catching snowflakes like spiders: open, Needing, awake. Leslie Cairns (She/her): Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric. She lives in Denver, Colorado. She is a Pushcart Prize Nomination for 2022 in the Short Story category ('Owl, Lunar, Twig'). She was an honorable mention in Flash 405's call in Exposition Review (2022). Leslie has upcoming flash, short stories, and poetry in various magazines (Full Mood Magazine, Final Girl Zine, Londemere Lit, and others). Twitter: starbucksgirly

It had been nearly a century since my last visit to the chateau. My light carriage, drawn by two dappled steeds, ascended the steep, narrow road that spiraled up the sides of the mountain in the warm summer evening. The journey lasted but a few hours, and during this brief period, I was serenaded by a myriad of creatures, both delicate and cruel, who inhabited that lofty terrain. Their voices grew dimmer as the elevation rose. By the time I reached the chateau, only the sound of clopping hooves filled my ears. At the gate, two servants approached and took control of the reins. They accompanied the carriage to the plaza and stopped at the foot of the main stairway. I stepped out and gazed up at the old building that towered over the land. This enormous structure, with its impenetrable ramparts and unsurmountable parapets, overwhelmed my senses. The gas lamps that lined the entryway of this magnificent architecture replaced the stars and planets that existed before all this came to pass. I bathed my eyes in this vision of delight, which loomed before me like a fortress rather than a palace. I turned to hail the servants who assisted me. They had unharnessed the horses and were walking toward the stable further up the mountain road, having anticipated the length of my stay. The chateau’s interior was decorated in the style of Louis XIV, with its marbled floors, massive ornamental cabinets, winding balustrades and crystal chandeliers. Very little, if anything, had changed during my absence. The habitual patrons gathered in the main hall. Like a silent breeze, I drifted past them. During the years between my visits, Madame, who raised her status within the establishment from chatelaine to host, mingled with her gentlemen admirers. She regaled in their pomposity and saw to their every comfort. Madame was not only a great beauty but a seasoned entrepreneur, satisfying all requirements of her clientele. I heard every word of their feebleminded conversations in which the fops flattered themselves in hopes of gaining special favors from their host. Sensing my presence, Madame interrupted her conversations with a bow and excused herself. “Ah, Count. How nice of you to make an appearance. It has been so long. I presume you arrived safely.” “Quite. My passage over the mountain roads progressed unhindered.” Her eyes sparkled like Jupiter and Saturn in a starless sky. “I do not mean to pry,” she said. “But I sense you seek refuge from your troubles.” “It is nothing more than a touch of ennui,” I replied. “Tonight, I desire something extraordinary to lighten my spirit.” “I have just what you need,” said Madame, with a gleam in her eye. “A new girl has made quite an impression.” “And, for what reason?” I inquired. “I cannot say. My guests refuse to talk about it after spending an evening with her.” “I wonder why? I insist you bring her to me.” “She is a gentle soul, Count. But, she does possess a singular manner.” “Those qualities are precisely what I seek.” “It will cost you a bit more than the customary rate,” said Madame. “She’s in demand, you know.” “Very well. I never negotiate that which must be possessed. Whatever the price, I’ll pay it.” Madame led me down a winding staircase and through a door that opened into an underground chamber. The dampness of the room caressed my body like the taffeta sheets lining my narrow bed. I inhaled the soothing scents of petrichor and perfumed digitalis. Madame took a sincere interest in my contentment. I adored her. She placed her arm upon mine and we sauntered across the floor until we reached an apothecary. Along the far wall lay several mahogany boxes, alike but for slight differences in size. This piqued my curiosity, which was immediately diverted by a gracious offering from Madame. “Prepare a solution for yourself while you wait, my dear Count. I remember your fondness for a certain potation of which we are replete.” I enjoyed the touch of Madame’s elegant arm upon mine. She was a homely little waif when first I set eyes on her centuries ago. Madame had been rescued from the perils of secret streets by the chateau’s baron. The latter had given this indelicate youth a chance at redemption as a chambermaid in his sprawling manor. She blossomed into a beautiful, well-bred woman under the late baron’s cultivation, secure in her femininity and noble character. Madame uncoupled her arm from mine and with a coquettish smile adjusted the mother-of-pearl necklace, whose cameo pressed deep into the notch of her pale neck. I began to think of Madame in a certain way, which took all my willpower to repress. I had not come for her that night. The heat flowing through my blood cooled, and for the moment, my arousal subdued. She blushed. Ah, Madame, I thought, you have read my mind. “A sofa for your comfort,” she said, pointing. She turned upon an axis like a miniature ballerina housed in a clock. Her back faced me, revealing unblemished skin beneath the décolleté gown, reigniting my passion—a torment I continued to resist. “There is a small room behind the counter with a mirror and running water, should you require it.” “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, smiling politely. Why should I require such amenities? They proved no use to me. Madame left my company, making her way back across the chamber and out the door to secure the girl. I cannot say, with certainty, when I first became aware of the diminution of my faculties. I experienced sudden lapses in consciousness during which I perceived time slowing to a standstill. I convinced myself this condition existed as a temporary aberration in my immortality. But, its persistence proved otherwise. My mental acuity, which served me well for centuries, became unreliable. During these fugues, I often wept, deprived of hearing the glorious cries of lost souls who begged me for release. Their futile appeals became fragments of sound, swallowed up in those distortions of time. I grew despondent by the frequency of these lapses and questioned my belief in immortality, fearful there existed an end to everything and that I had entered into the senescence of eternity. Yet, having this discontent weighing on my mind, I did not lose my insatiable lust to possess whomever I desired. And so, that night, I redoubled my efforts to enjoy what I came for, denying my troubling thoughts but, in truth, barely keeping them at bay. I prepared a favorite potion by placing a cube of sugar upon a sieve, then poured drops of absinthe over it, observing the little green fairies sidle down the glass. I never tired of spending time with these tiny demons, savoring the bitter taste of their madness with the sweetness of their hospitality. Suddenly, my tongue began to burn. I could not reconcile this attack on my senses and became anxious, fearful the pleasures of my addiction had come to an end. My disquiet was interrupted by the sound of the chamber door opening. I looked up. Beneath the flickering lights of the ceiling candelabra stood the new girl, poised erect like Beardsley’s Venus in a white diaphanous gown. A single pale rose rested between her breasts. She held her arms behind her back as if concealing a gift. Oh, Madame. You knew exactly what I needed. I set the glass down and stepped forward. “Come closer,” I beckoned. “What is your name?” “Olalla,” she replied softly. O-lal-la, I whispered. These three sounds brought more joy than a trinity of elated sighs. Her name was familiar, but I could not recall where I had heard it before. Perhaps, in a story told long ago. “May I have this dance, Olalla?” “Certainly, sir. It would give me pleasure. But, I do not hear any music.” “How thoughtless of me.” With a snap of my fingers, the music commenced. “Ah, the Devil’s Trill,” she said. “How apropos.” “Apropos, you say. In what way, Olalla?” “It is a very seductive piece, don’t you think?” She was poignant in her description, and perhaps, not the innocent I imagined. The music was indeed a demonic masterpiece of seduction. And now, I employed it to thrill us with trills of forbidden harmony. I took Olalla in my arms and we glided across the chamber floor like skaters upon virgin ice. “You dance so well, sir. Better than any gentleman I have ever had.” “I am quite experienced in these diversions,” I replied. “But, never, never have I had the satisfaction of such a blithe companion as yourself.” “Thank you, sir. What a lovely compliment. I hope you will allow me to repay it in some way.” As the tempo of the phantom music increased, so did my vitality, for the quivering of the violin strings raced through my body in tempestuous arcs of fire. My braided tresses whipped wildly around Olalla, pulling her closer, fueling the mounting flames that would consume her soul. She stared at my smile, which surely betrayed my intentions. I awaited the moment of her submission when she realized in whose arms she found herself. This did not happen. Olalla laughed in unrestrained delight, exposing two curious, pointed teeth. Her eyes grew larger, turning into swirling, crimson pools. The sudden transformation startled me and my thoughts strayed from their path. I recalled the story of a young woman who lived in a shadow-world like mine. She wandered the land, having in her possession the extraordinary power to undo the curses of ineluctable vanity, cunning, and duplicity in the undead. Each tainted soul she touched found redemption. “It is time I repaid your compliment,” she said. “You know who I am.” Before I could respond, she placed her lips against my neck. In her unholy kiss, I experienced the ineffable thrill I had so often given others through the centuries. The clock on the wall stopped and I swooned, once again sequestered inside the end of time as she feasted on my blood. I, the heartless predator, had become the unsuspecting prey. Olalla guided me to the sofa on which I reposed. With a snap of her fingers, the music stopped. She prepared a second potion of absinthe, for the first had metathesized into a clear liquid, abandoned by the green fairies whose patience had grown thin by my devotion to Olalla. I looked up. The petals of her pale rose turned grey. “Drink this,” she said. To my chagrin, each sip of the absinthe tasted more disagreeable than the last. I tossed the glass with my remaining strength. The green fairies scattered across the floor in bewilderment. “That’s right. Run, you wicked creatures. Your fealty is no longer desired.” Olalla’s crimson eyes flared as she nodded in agreement. She stood above me, licking the traces of my blood that lingered on her lips. Then she knelt and again helped herself to the tinctured remains that flowed through my veins. I could stand it no more. “Stop, Olalla! I know why you are here. You have repaid my compliment a thousand times over with your kindness.” The letting of my blood both weakened and soothed me. My eyes fluttered as I fell into a reverie, gently floating down the course of a narrow, dark river that meandered over the contour of Olalla’s body, finally depositing me at the fleshy delta of her feet. I spoke in a voice I did not recognize. “Olalla.” “Yes?” “There is something you must do.” She led me into the room that Madame had mentioned upon my arrival. Above the sink hung a large mirror. The truth, always to be found in a looking glass, no longer terrified me, for, in the absence of time, I neither dwelled on the crimes of my past nor considered the depravity of my future. I stared at my reflection in which lurked the sorrows I had caused others. Opposite me stood a man I did not recognize—feeble with white hair, pallid complexion, and untold layers of mottled skin. A villainous scar ran from his eye to his lip. It was a face mutilated by the sins of countless ages. As I continued to stare, the collection of grotesque features coalesced on the glass canvas into a portrait of something monstrously handsome. Peering deeper into the mirror, I entered the world of Pentimento and studied the sedimentations within the frame, excavating the goodness hidden deep beneath his soul—a new rendering of the man—one who no longer suffered from the incalculable cruelties he committed. Olalla released the water from the faucet, and by her hands, I was absolved. The sink filled with thick clots of rotting flesh as her fingers peeled away the scurf amassed over centuries. I gazed again into the mirror, astonished by what I saw. A monster changed into a man—one I once would have ruined for his course sensibilities. Now, I adored him. How curious that the living and the undead never relinquish their sense of vanity. Olalla attempted to drain the final drops of blood from my body. “No, no, my Sweet. You must leave me a small souvenir. Please, let me go.” She stepped back. The rose between her breasts turned black and withered before my eyes. “It was the poison in your blood that killed it,” she said. “Now, you are free.” She led me into the chamber and guided me toward the row of coffins. I lay my head upon downy pillows, never expecting such a tranquil ending to eternal damnation. Her lips touched mine, and then she was gone. Who granted me this undeserved fate? Olalla! Her compassion saved me from iniquity. Trust my words. She is real. Prepare yourself. Olalla will find you in the low moments of your high-spirited cravings, between your last kill and your next. Let her drain your veins of madness. She is kind that way, taking nothing more than your tainted blood and leaving you with a peace you could never possess without her. Olalla. Stephen Myer is a writer and musician based in Southern California. His stories and poetry have been published in online and print journals, such as Goats Milk Magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Grand Little Things, The Literary Yard, The Avenue Journal, The Quiet Reader, Close To The Bone, and others.

my brother is off to school, backpack over a shoulder eyes glued to the phone in hand white buds dangling from his ears. he doesn’t turn when I wave, his head bobs and the only sound on the street are his big floppy feet slapping the pavement. as he approaches corner to cross the road alone, my heart beats hard and fast. i lean forward to catch grey hair poking from under a cap jaw set, determined all his fifty-five years. it occurs to me at 8:14 am, he is two years younger, twenty score stronger, ten times braver, than I will ever be. Karen Grose is a writer from Toronto, Canada. Her first novel, The Dime Box, was selected by Amnesty International for its 2021 book club to represent women’s issues. She has recently begun to write poetry. Switching Gears honours those in the process of retraining and reschooling, as they follow new paths and dreams.

Cardboard boxes stacked high as the kitchen window, their open wings only fit for the kid to fly past the original lino floor, back when I could have been a pilot, past long gone wall tiles grubby with patterns of stubby trees; generations of our stew ions enriching the paintwork. Still, the next people will have their work cut out to remove stains we leave behind, our aroma from the brick, memory from mortar. Pity — you had finally found a satisfactory carpet, royal blue, you insisted, deep weave of everything you could want for a living room, not worrying now that thundering feet would wear it patchy on the stairs, or radioactive with unsupervised art. A dining room table meant for dining, too, not a nest for printouts, accounts to be totted through as best you could; ravel puzzled out to beat the squeeze of university fees, promising I would someday buy you a Volvo, pity. Crates of shoes, clothes for charity, television I fixed up for the two channels you still watched, jaundiced cookery books, net curtains, tangle of regret. Why did you allow things to accumulate when we’re only going to get rid of them anyway? A word from the author: Simon Leonard has been struggling recently. Having had his first chapbook published this year, well into his forties, he tried other ways to express himself, before coming back to what he always writes.

Nathaniel rose from a deep slumber to find himself lying on a black stone river bank, hearing only the sloshing of ice-cold water. The starless night sky above had no moon or celestial brightness. Only a pale violet aurora of dread, a color out of space, offered a slight glimmer of light behind the clouds that breezed along. Nathaniel gazed far into the distance seeing only desolate, scorched earth and withered black lands. This was a land beyond any semblance of life. The sound of ripples on the shore was interrupted by the crushed stone of hollow dead wood, which frightened Nathaniel. He quickly jumped to his feet and turned to see a weathered old man draped in tattered robes standing on an old wooden skiff, holding a long oar. Nathaniel took a moment to collect his thoughts before he asked the old man, “What is this place?” The old man’s mouth didn’t move, but instead, a disembodied voice answered, “nowhere.” “Who are you?” Nathaniel inquired at the figure while looking around to find the source of the voice. “I am that which will accompany you to the end of the river of time.” “You’re Charon? The Ferryman? You are death—the grim reaper. I died? But I was nowhere near a river, I….” Charon reached forth his hand to collect payment. Saying only, “Obol.” Nathaniel padded down his pockets before realizing he had nothing from his life besides his clothing. Nathaniel could hardly stammer out, “I have nothing to pay you with.” Charon retracted his hand, grabbed his long wooden pole, and began to push his boat away from the dark stone beach. Nathaniel begged in desperation, “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here!” Charon did not reply. He only pushed his boat further back into the deep black waters. Nathaniel continued to shout toward Charon and chased him into the cold water. He scrambled and screamed as he waded through the riverbank mud and eventually toppled into the shallow water. Tumbling forward and sinking into the frigid stream. The water felt vengeful, digging into his skin and dragging him further into its icy depths. A drowning sensation immediately swept over him, numbing him as he sunk beneath its waves. Charon’s shriveled hand sunk into the waters and dragged Nathaniel back up through the water’s surface and into the boat. As Nathaniel spat out water, Charon again held out his hand for payment. After gasping for air, Nathaniel cried out, “I have no money, but please do not leave me here.” Charon retracted his hand again, placed his long oar into the water, and the boat came to an immediate halt. He stirred the pole, and Nathaniel could feel the vessel turning as he did. The ship started to jostle against the current once it faced upstream. Nathaniel was confused and asked, “Where are we headed?” Charon did not reply. He merely steadied the boat against the current and used his pole to press the vessel forward. Nathaniel could feel the cold wind strike against him, his wet clothing tearing at his skin from the freezing temperature. In desperation, Nathaniel rubbed his arms to warm himself. He looked around to either side of the boat and could no longer see a trace of the river banks. After a short while, a faint light began to glimmer in the distance. Just enough for Nathaniel to see his breath in it. A silhouette could be seen in the distance, a figure sitting in a chair. Nathaniel waved an arm and cried out for the figure’s attention. Only when the ferryman sailed them closer did he hardly believe what he saw. It was himself from just a few years prior, sitting in a chair, crying as he filled out forms that cold lonely December. “Is this a reflection of my life?” Nathaniel asked, but Charon did not respond. “I was tired and in pain. That’s all I could feel,” Nathaniel explained as he watched his past self. Still, the ferryman did not respond and continued to press forward up the river. In time, the memory faded as they pushed past, and all other light but the faint purple stream above dissipated. Nathaniel’s clothes started to dry as he continued to rub his arms. “Where are we headed?” He asked Charon again. Again, Charon did not answer. Instead, another light from further up the shore lit up. A small room with cheap holiday decor. Nathaniel saw several forms moving about in it, working over a long table. As the boat drew nearer to pass it, Nathaniel could again see himself, but with two others, a stressed woman laboriously kneading dough while he and another man were in significant disagreement. “Those were the final days of my bakery. I never heard from them again, Martiál and my wife. They both left me. Together.” Nathaniel could only look for so long before turning away and back to Charon. “Please, no more. How much further till the end of the river?” Charon reached forth his hand and demanded, “Obol.” Nathaniel could only shake his head in response. Charon regripped his wooden oar and pressed onward. Nathaniel felt relieved once the light dimmed and again was enveloped by darkness. His clothes dried, and the cold breeze died as another light from the shores began to grow. The shadow of his pregnant wife looked on as a younger Nathaniel and Martiál moved in a new thrift couch into their old apartment living room. As the old torn sofa was pressed against the wall, friends and family burst in the door with celebration, bottles of wine, and laughter. Nathaniel shouted to grab their attention at the top of his lungs, but his memories played on without him. Nathaniel turned to the ferryman, “We just got into the new apartment with my promotion at Tamberlane Supply right around Christmas. This was before the bakery… and the miscarriage.” As the cheer faded with the light, Nathaniel could only watch on in yearning of the days that passed by. Before he knew it, music from his days at university could be heard in the distance, growing bright with multi-colored lights. Dozens of young drunk men and women shouted and danced. A young Nathaniel pressed against his young, not-yet-married bride as Martiál, surrounded by women, stared at them from a distance. “Martiál could always get what he wanted and always wanted what he shouldn’t have. Those parties were fun, but I only ever wanted her.” Nathaniel gawked at the raging party as they passed by, peering at it from the distance until he could see it no more. The ripples under the boat seemed to rise as they pressed forward, and another light was shown. Martiál’s annual family Christmas party at the local pizzeria they owned near their old school. Nathaniel was just a boy. A boy who had finally built up his courage to ask a girl on a date. A girl that would one day become his wife. Nathaniel could not think of anything to say. His recollection of the night was hazy yet clear. He did not remember the words he used, but he remembered her response, “I thought you’d never ask.” Nathaniel’s eyes swelled from bittersweet heartache, and the boat moved on. Soon, another faint glow arose, and Nathaniel didn’t have the strength to look up and focused down at the bottom of the boat. Only once the boat nearly passed did Nathaniel look up to see a young boy sitting on top of a bright green hill covered with tall grass and wildflowers with a beautiful girl, unaware of how little time they had left. A tear streamed down his cheek, and Nathaniel turned to Charon, demanding, “What is this? What is the point of all this? How much further to the end?” The light from any memory faded, and again he was alone with Charon. The violet aurora overhead gave a subtle hue that it hadn’t before, and the voice from beyond finally spoke again, “You have spent your life, and now you must pay your debt. If you do not give that which is owed, then you must begin again.” Nathaniel was confused and did not know what that meant. “Obol,” Charon demanded again. Another light grew, not from the shore but the river before them. Charon and Nathaniel sailed into the threshold of the warm, bright light and faded out of time and space. * * * * * * * Once upon a time, a little boy sat on a hill and played with the most beautiful girl he would ever meet. C.J. Goodin is a science fiction, horror, and weird fiction writer obsessed with death, the infinite, and self-navigation. He has published works on Vocal and was a finalist in the Vocal+ Fiction Awards with THROUGH THE OBSIDIAN RING. He lives in South Florida with wife and two kids, often enjoying Minecraft or ‘Love, Death, and Robots’ when he should be writing.