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There was another new one today. The man rose from bed, feeling the bandages covering his body. The white carnation had bloomed out of his forearm. It squeezed between the layers of wrappings, and the petals stretched towards the rays of gray light peaking through the wooden planks nailed across the window. No matter how many layers of bandages he used, the flowers always poked through. He held the carnation gently between his fingers, stroking the petals, before plucking the stem from his skin. It floated down and joined the others blanketing the floor like a wilting meadow. Some were blue and some were purple, and some were white. But after falling to the floor they all were black. In the bathroom, the man picked out another roll of gauze and wrapped it around the open patch of flesh until it was hidden again. A small dot of blood soaked through from where the flower had pierced the skin. It didn’t hurt because it must have bloomed while he was resting his eyes. But it never hurt much anyway. He didn’t mind. The house talked sometimes as he walked between rooms. It sighed and moaned, and the floors creaked. But the house wasn’t looking for conversation. The man never responded and this didn’t seem to bother the house. It had its own life. It just liked to hum to itself. Over time nails started protruding from the floorboards, and the man used to pay them mind to avoid the pain, but after a while he’d plucked enough flowers from his body that they cushioned the sharp ends. It hurt less plucking the flowers than it did when he’d stepped on the nails. So he didn’t mind. He didn’t wrap the gauze around his eyes though so he could see. Just in case. Down the stairs was the living room. He must have forgotten to buy furniture. His memory wasn’t so good anymore. But the piano was still there. It was dusty but that didn’t make it sound any worse. The G chord was still a G chord. There were old photographs that littered the floor, and if it weren’t for the piano he would have avoided going into the living room. The photographs lay atop the flowers, but the people didn’t have faces he recognized. The film must have been faulty. There were blotches like sunspots and the edges were gnarled like someone had tried to burn them. He hadn’t though. Tried to burn them. Sometimes he would let a few flowers bloom before plucking them all at once, so he could cover the photographs with lilies and marigolds. There must have been a crack somewhere though that was letting in wind, because the photographs always came to the surface of the dead garden. The photographs made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know who was in them. He didn’t know anyone. Sometimes a rose would bloom. Not often. But sometimes. They were always different colors. The thorns made it more painful when they pierced the skin, but he didn’t mind because they were his favorite flower. Once, a rose had bloomed from the back of his throat, and there was nothing he could do but wait for it to mature so he could reach the stem without pricking his fingers. If it hadn’t been gagging him and cutting his insides, he may have left the rose where it was. It was a purple rose, and there were drops of blood dripping from its petals like red dewdrops. That was his favorite flower he’d grown. That flower, he put in a vase with water and placed it on top of his bedside table. It felt like a labor of love, picking that flower. The others felt like parasites. Like he was removing a tick from his skin. Sometimes. But the purple rose felt like giving birth. He was proud of that rose. He spits up blood for a few days after plucking that rose. There was no gauze that could wrap the wound. But he didn’t mind. When the rose wilted and died, he walked outside and placed it on the earth. The man sat down at the piano, wiping away the lining of dust on the keys, and played a few notes. It was better that the room didn’t have furniture. The sounds shimmered and stretched out across the walls. He never learned to play the piano but he knew what music sounded like. You press enough keys enough times and you begin to hear which notes go along with other notes. It was cold inside the house, and playing the piano made him feel warm. He liked to imagine his fingers dancing across the ivory to the music they created. Another flower started to bloom from his neck. It always felt at first like a worm burrowing through to the surface of the skin. The petals exhaled and stroked his ear. He didn’t recognize this type of flower. It was exciting when a new flower bloomed that he hadn’t seen before. There used to be a mirror in the bathroom where he could admire the flowers but it wasn’t there anymore. He thought there used to be a mirror. Maybe there never was. It didn’t matter. He decided to leave the flower alone for now. He had an audience. It liked the music. As he continued to play, the man wondered if the flower saw what covered the floorboards and recognized what it was looking at. He hoped not. It was best not to think about. Just keep tapping the keys. It’s getting colder. Stay warm. Sometimes the man liked to go outside, but not often. It was a lot of work removing the wooden boards from the door, and it wasn’t always nice out. More often than not it was not nice out. It didn’t use to be like that. But it was still outside. It’s good to leave the house sometimes. If the flower hadn’t bloomed he would have stayed inside today. He hadn’t decided that but after thinking about it he realized that’s what he would have done. The flower had never seen the outside before. It might be good for it to see. The house always protested when he pried the wood from the doorway as if he were tearing a ligament from the bone. But it liked when the gray sunlight shined through. Its walls glowed and quieted when the light reached inside. This was the house’s answer to the flowers that bloomed from the man’s skin. It hurt when it was happening, but the result was worth it for a time. And like the flowers, it couldn’t stay for long. The man liked to think of it that way. The house didn’t tell him. Each new day the man stepped outside it was different. He was sure there used to be grass, and the grass was alive and green. Sometimes it would rain and the rain was warm when it soaked through his bandages. He always had to change all his bandages after going outside when it rained but he never minded. Now there was just dirt. It looked like it was going to rain, but it never rained anymore so he didn’t think about it. There used to be a bright yellow sun. He figured it was still there somewhere, but gray clouds covered the sky like they always did now. The flower on his neck breathed and tasted the air. It wasn’t much. Not like it used to be. But he hoped the flower still liked what it saw. On the edge of the property were dense woods. He used to take walks in the woods when it was nicer outside, but after a few walks he realized there was no life in the woods but the trees themselves. He didn’t like going into the woods much after he realized that. The trees were dying. Not like how trees turn orange and red before shedding their leaves in the fall. They were wilting like the picked flowers lining the floors of the house. Death wasn’t always pretty. It was never pretty anymore. Just inside the woods was a small clearing. At the center of the clearing was a gravestone. It had been there as long as he could remember. It could have been there for days or weeks or forever. But that part didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was there. The man decided to introduce the flower to the gravestone. It was the only thing worth showing the flower. He sat down upon the lumps of earth and looked at the gravestone. There were no words written on it. . There had never been. But every so often he’d return to the gravestone to see if any words had appeared. It made no sense that this would happen. There was nobody else. It was hope, though, he decided. There was hope in places where the unknown existed. That was a nice sentiment, he thought. He liked to think there was someone buried beneath the earth he sat upon. He liked to think that there used to be someone else. Even if they were dead, it was less lonely that way. He wondered what the house looked like when the dead person was alive. Or if there was more grass. More sunshine. Rain. He liked to imagine that the dead person lived in the same house, and when they were alive so too was the world. He liked to imagine there were animals that ran throughout the woods. Sometimes he thought it would make him sad to dwell on that possibility. But it didn’t. It made him happy. It made him happy to think that the world used to be a nicer place. That it wasn’t always like this. That meant one day it could come back. The nice place that it used to be. The flower on his neck stretched out its stem towards the forest canopy. He stroked its petals and plucked it from his skin. Between his fingers its petals were like velvet or fur. They were shaped like bells and they were bright red. The man didn’t notice the blood that had been drawn. The blood looked like it had always been a part of the flower. He placed the flower at the foot of the gravestone, next to the wilted remains of the rose. It wasn’t his favorite flower, but it was new. Its newness felt exciting. Not all change was atrophy. That was a nice thing to know. He decided that was reason enough to leave it outside the house. And besides, everything needs to know it’s not alone. Nothing wants to die in isolation. The man stood to walk back inside the house and bandage his wound. It had not been a bad day. * * * The man was in a great deal of pain when he awoke the next morning. The longer time went on, the longer he would allow himself to sleep. It didn’t matter how long he slept. Unconsciousness was a blink. It was a brief gap in existence. It had never been anything else. Sometimes he would awake and force himself back to sleep, knowing by the sighs of the house and the gray light shining through the wooden boards that the world had continued to atrophy. Though it had never happened, and somewhere inside he knew it wouldn’t, the man still held on to the hope that one day he would awake and the world would have returned to a state long before his memory. Without that hope there was nothing worth waking up to. There were at least a dozen of them. Like a bouquet grown from his flesh. A pink orchid bloomed from his abdomen, purple nightshade protruding from his calves and shoulders, black roses erupting from his chest and biceps, their thorns latched to his skin like scared children grasping their parent in a crowd. Red poppies hung from his forehead, obscuring his sight with a film of deep scarlet. He ripped out the poppies, throwing them to the floor as the blood streamed down his face. Black, crusted spots dotted the bandages beneath each new flower like potted soil. One by one he tore the flowers from his skin. The blood came, more and more blood like death howls, and he pulled out their petals and ground them between his fingers. Roses’ thorns dislodged, taking with them pieces of bandage, unfurling the wrappings. Pockets of pale, weeping flesh revealed themselves, and the man felt naked and cold. Once each flower had been removed, he lay drowning in a bed of crumpled petals like Millais’ Ophelia. The man walked to the bathroom and closed the door. He began removing the bandages starting with the feet, and undressed himself. When his face was bare he reached for a new roll of gauze, and began again. He was glad there was no mirror. Walls and floorboards moaned as the man walked down the stairs to the living room. The house seemed upset but it wouldn’t talk to him. It hummed to itself about its grievances. The blanket of flower petals had begun turning to black paste beneath the weight of his constant footsteps. He sat down at the piano to play and to let his fingers dance to its sounds. The notes felt hollow and out of tune. He hated what he heard. He hated what he’d done. But he continued to tap the keys because the cold was setting in. The cold was so much worse than it was before. And it was all he knew, and it was all he understood. The G chord was still a G chord. The house and the flowers and the cold wouldn’t take that away. But as he played the notes a terrible pain erupted from his fingertips. Thorns pierced through the bandages, sticking out of the sides of his fingers like pieces of broken bone, and something was forcing its way up to the tips as if his veins had come alive and were determined to exit the body through his nails. It was like he had placed his hands into an open fire, and he could do nothing but watch as black roses sprouted and bloomed from the ends of each finger. The man, horrified, fell off the piano bench and collapsed atop the floor of wilted flowers. The roses continued to grow until they were as long as the fingers from which they were born. Ten black roses stood sighing and aching for the gray light outside. The man stared at the growths and at the streams of blood that ran down the thorns as if a razor blade had been taken to each appendage. Sometimes things hurt and they are beautiful. Sometimes things can be both. Through the cracks in the boarded windows he saw the gray light expanding into a blinding white that reached the farthest walls of the living room. He pushed his face against the cold wood and looked out into the world. Something was watching. He saw only the white light, but he felt it watching. Magnetized, focused eyes staring through the leaking walls. The man pried the nails from the blocked door, and he felt such anger. There was so much anger, boiling his insides, anger in anticipation for the house to protest and moan. But no sound came. The white light burst through the door the moment it came loose, and the house was bathed. The house was cleansed. It became quiet. He opened the door, already recoiling from the cold he was to let in, but it wasn’t cold. It wasn’t cold at all. The white light shone from just beyond the forest’s edge. Growing pains struck different parts of his body like the piano’s notes as he approached, and he looked down upon himself to see flowers sprouting. New flowers and familiar flowers: hydrangeas and dianthuses and morning glories and tulips and roses. They inhaled and exhaled in the fresh warmth, and the man’s body was the soil for a vivid, phantasmagoric garden. They grew and grew, and they peeled off the layers of bandages adorning his being. And shedding his mummified skin, basking in the fertile heat, the man crossed the tree line into the clearing. There, standing at the foot of the empty gravestone, was a deer. Behind the glowing light it produced, the deer was white and the deer was small. Its antlers had maybe once been antlers, but were now two long stalks of foxglove. It wasn’t afraid of the man. It stood watching. But the man was afraid. The man was so afraid. There was a reason, but he didn’t know how to articulate it. The deer wasn’t looking for an answer, anyway. It was just a deer. A white posy clawed its way to the surface of the man’s cheek, and he winced. It was becoming harder to breathe. The deer watched, and the man watched a flower bloom from the deer’s snout. And together the two living things stood with the empty gravestone between them, cultivating gardens. A creeping melancholia settled across the man’s weeping flesh, and he felt what he had wanted to feel for a long time. He didn’t know this is what he had wanted to feel until this moment. But without another heartbeat the concept would never have been visible. Without a mirror the gray light was black and void. The man stepped across the lumps of earth, over the wilted twin flowers, and reached out his hand to the deer. He watched the droplets of scarlet blood staining its white fur from the flowers that had bloomed. And he wanted nothing more than to know the deer wasn’t in pain. If it was, if the flowers cut and burned and stung the animal like they did him, then he wanted the deer to know that. He wanted the deer to know that they hurt him too. The man stroked the deer’s fur, weaving his fingers around the flowers, only touching the fur that bled and burned, and the deer stared. More and more flowers bloomed, piercing every inch of the man’s flesh. But the man was tired. He was tired of plucking the flowers. So the man sat down upon the earth at the foot of the empty gravestone. His breaths grew shallow and congested as something beautiful grew inside him. He didn’t know why he thought it would be beautiful. He just knew. There was no other way to see it. The deer came around the gravestone and lay down beside the man, and together their gardens continued to grow. As the deer rested its head on the man’s lap, and its body became the planted flowers blanketing the earth, the man felt the weight of fear release through his open mouth. A bouquet erupted from between his teeth. His naked skin became the roots that intertwined beneath the gravestone, and the man dissolved into the flowers that bloomed and bloomed and bloomed. Until the two lives became the only life that remained. It only hurts for a second. Jack Moody is the author of the novel Crooked Smile, the short story collection Dancing to Broken Records, and the novella The Monotony of Everlasting. He is a contributor to the literary newspaper The Bel Esprit Project and Return magazine. His stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Expat Press, Misery Tourism, Maudlin House, Scatter of Ashes, Punk Noir Magazine, Bear Creek Gazette, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and many others.

“There was a full moon that night,” Smith said, “so we didn’t go outside.” # # # By the time Jake had finished with his photographs and covered up the corpse with a couple of rubber sheets and weighted them down with river rocks—But how, he wondered, did river rocks get way up here?—the other deputy had arrived. Wakefield was a long way from the county seat, and it had taken him a couple of hours. It would take the coroner even longer. Jake started the interviews next, nearly a dozen of them, but nobody had much to say, and he’d finished up by 11:00. Then, after filling in the other deputy, he’d just stood on the edge of the clearing, breathing in great breaths of the chill October air. The way the body had looked was bizarre—so bizarre, in fact, that he was dismayed. The word had just popped into his head, a word he couldn’t remember using or even thinking before. But there it was: I’m dismayed. And then he’d looked back over his shoulder, back down the barren valley. # # # A fire was smoldering in the stove in the general store, and most of the men Jake had interviewed earlier were sitting around the tables with their coffee and cigarettes. A couple had bottles of Pabst, and Jake was tempted, but he thought better of it and filled a cup from the urn on the counter and stuffed a dollar bill into the Mason jar beside it. Then he took a chair at an unoccupied table and tasted his coffee. He’d had worse, but not recently, so he poured in some sugar and went back to the counter and filled up the cup from the pitcher of milk before he sat back down. They were all watching him, the old man behind the counter and the customers, so he said, “Morning again, folks. I think I’ve taken all your statements, so I wonder if we could just talk for a few minutes, just talk informally?” Several of the men shrugged and a couple more nodded, so he cleared his throat and went on. “It turns out that our friend out there was carrying ID, so we hope to get ahold of his next of kin right away.” As he also knew, but didn’t mention, the man had been carrying over a hundred dollars in cash in his wallet. The fact that it was there spoke well of the townspeople’s honesty and was an indication that he could trust them, up to a point. “This wasn’t an accidental death,” he continued. “You all know that. We’ll learn more after the coroner has examined the remains, but right now I’d just like to … Well, I wonder, do many people pass through Wakefield on bikes?” The place didn’t strike him as lying on any kind of picturesque route that might attract bicyclists. Or campers for that matter, although the man had been carrying a folded-up pup tent in one of his panniers. The men glanced around at each other and shook their heads. “Never seen one before,” one of them said. “Any tourists at all?” The men shook their heads again. “With luck,” Jake said, “we’ll figure out sooner or later why this fellow was here, and why he was here at night, but we need to understand something else, too.” He started to pull out his notebook, but caught himself and took a sip of his coffee instead. He was used to people not wanting to get involved, but this felt different. He took another sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The victim ended up practically on some of your front lawns, and judging by where we found most of the blood, that’s where he was attacked. Something that bad,” he went on, “there must have been a hell of a lot of noise. A lot of commotion. The man may have had time to scream. A lot of you may have heard it. So did you think about seeing what was going on, maybe … I don’t know …” And that was when Les Smith—Jake had taken his statement earlier—made his comment: “There was a full moon that night, so we didn’t go outside.” Jake looked from face to face, and several of the other men were nodding. One of them, maybe prompted to speak because he was sitting right beside Smith, said “Not when there’s a full moon.” Jake took another sip, and several of the men stirred in their chairs. “That’s right,” one of them said. “Yeah,” another one said, “don’t none of us in Wakefield leave our houses at night when there’s a full moon.” Another one said, “Yeah,” and then so did another. Grove Koger is the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure; Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal; and former Assistant Editor of Art Patron magazine. He blogs about travel and related subjects at worldenoughblog.wordpress.com/author/gkoger/.

Something my wife Pointed Out Last night: More of my friends Are dead Than alive. It is common Stains Decrease Yet I am only 41. More of my family Are dead Than alive. I have a list Of people Who I speak of In the first tense Who Can only be expressed In the past. A soup: Suicides Cancers Cars Bursting Hearts Haemorrhages Drownings Alcohol Substances. Sludge. There is no meaning to be found in lists.

circles edging out the spaces the circles are going nowhere a pixel paces it- self unable to walk a straight line I think I’d run circles around oscillating sighs if this tinfoil life wasn’t wedged between frames and time couldn’t tell where I begin or I end in Oz when you were finally taught to speak you called me human without laughing but were hard put to prove that without wincing not surprising if only for the scarecrow inciting the squalls and the spells frightening the parts of ourselves strung out over the fields intimidating the crops and the crickets straw heads hindering tin words sounds made of meat staring down the lions and the legs recoiling at your feet ribs just crumbs cast off by you a smile too human too confident to shriek George Taxon is an emerging poet living in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s worked as an antiquarian bookseller, a medical editor, and an administrator, among other things, and his interests include psychology, physics, and metaphysics.

The heavy fragrance of the white Casablanca Lily mingling with the white Baferrari Lily blooming in the ninety-degree heat of my July garden takes me back to an Upper West Side street corner in the early morning winter dark twenty-five years ago. Once a week, before work on Fridays, I hurried a mile downtown to buy a bouquet of white lilies from an old man who sold them from the back of his white van. He was a round little man with a gap between his front teeth, and a gold filling. He taught me how to clip the sacs of pollen on the anthers of the stamens to prevent shedding. He was one of those oddballs who eked out a living on the city streets in those days, like the knife grinder or the seltzer deliveryman. After about a year, I stopped going to buy them. I never saw him again. but he inspired me to grow my own white lilies. My mother hated lilies. She wouldn’t let them into her house because they reminded her of funerals and death. I am not my mother. In the summer of my convalescence, I sit under the wisteria arbor. The heavy flowers droop on their stems, the air buzzes with insects. After weeks of illness, of waking up in the morning feeling sore and bruised, I rose from a dream, in which a beautiful young man told a table of enthralled listeners how he’d survived a motorcycle accident. When I woke, I remembered the dream. I felt rejuvenated, no longer in pain, all the parts of my body relaxed and released, like a pond turning over in springtime, or a lily perfuming the air.

Snapdragons are killer curveballs a violent wrist twist to reap a white terror, red stitching slicing sky, bending air, bursting ash a hissing arc seeking ready leather but also a flower—puffed pastel petals erupting upward, a plant best placed at property’s edge both share the same season blooming by spring and wilted by winter, perfect when partnered with sunshine in baseball they’re best when sown with restraint, for excessive snapdragons will impel elbow’s ulnar to tear into two producing a “pop!” an internal turmoil like a stem being ripped from its roots and the petrified pitcher will visit a surgeon and soon see a smiling scar on their arm though such forecasts are scarce and must not prompt pitchers to stop snapping off their best breakers since the sharpest snapdragons are invasive to hitters, bats planted on shoulders means strikeouts but a hanging snapdragon blowing free in the breeze is sure to be sent into orbit. Grant Young (he/his) spent five years throwing snapdragons at the University of San Francisco—and has a smiling scar on his arm to show for it. He is the founding editor of Clinch, a literary magazine for the martial arts. His work has been published by HAD, The Twin Bill, Idle Ink, and elsewhere.

Being a better kind of ghost Due to the high levels of domestic accident these days, There’s a chance that I might be a newly formed Ghost, It doesn’t feel the way you think, though I am solid, breathable, clumsy like you I can still exhale, be indelicate, railing and flailing and moving things round was never really my scene I return each night though, Undress in the dark, set the alarm, lay on the bed, Try and steal the covers like always Once I whispered, asked you to come with me It’s too late you said, sleep, Ask me in the morning I listen properly now, without interrupting But it seems there’s nothing you want to say In the evenings, we just chill on the sofa with the wine we once shared, And never give away the end of the film, While you doze, I guzzle the popcorn crumbs I still put the bins out on Wednesday night Because you always forget Clink down the moonlit path Like a good husband Being dead is no excuse for not recycling I wonder how long we go on like this, In a spectral domestic bliss, I hope its forever, Or at least till you are ready, To come away with me The promise of rain Promise me the sun will not shine every morning, But, in the absence of light, you will instead Explain your half- remembered dream, This time I will listen, and try to understand We will each acknowledge our side of The corruption of bed linen, And, for the sake of argument Smooth out the frowning wrinkles With swallowed pride Promise me, if we must one day revisit These moments of misunderstanding, We can go together, bare foot Not wallowing but squelching in the mire Promise me the soft fingertips of rain, Gently resting in palms, Ready for forgiveness, A slow melting of last nights’ frost Those silent signs of a thaw Opening night The week of the show, You had started wearing the umbilical cord like a fashionable scarf, tighter And try with all your tiny might, There was no way to undo it Ready, in your pink birthday suit, This had become an engagement party, of sorts Head down, ready to depart into a fluid world A wrinkle, frowned in hospital towels, a new costume, Rushed down blurry corridors into a waiting theatre To play blindly, in the performance of your life It snowed that morning even though it was late Easter, in the darkness we observed the melt, numbed and dressed for the occasion in blue scrubs waiting, watching, an incubation period This was no dress rehearsal Opening on stage, ten weeks earlier than planned, You became a living puppet, tangled wires twisted, pumped up your lungs flat as pancakes, steroid breath, finding your voice, you were the star of this show, Somehow, you made it through the opening night, A brave performance, Centre stage in the hospital floodlights Gavin Turner is a writer of poetry and fiction. He has had work published in Punk Noir Magazine, Void Space, JAKE and icebreaker lit, not to mention Roi Faineant press. His debut chapbook The Round Journey was published in May 2022. You can find him on @gtpoems on Twitter or via his website www.gtpoems.com

Hibernation Comfort No one possesses this road this early. The juxtaposition of ebony tar and light, and the uneven patches where monsoon dug its heels in welcome me as I lodge my claims. In ten minutes I exhaust my energy to jog. My shadow hibernates beside a boulder. I have no power over this life I adore because of these elongated winters, caves of sleep, leaves of crackling, goodbyes unfinished. Fields Where We Belong Fields turn brief beneath our running feet, and the bridge, squares of formless green, trees sketched by me when I was six. If you ask me why we run we cannot tell. There is a feeling. A trace of an urge. Noon showers upon us, warm piss. A hiss says that our ankles will be dotted with fang-marks. We can comprehend the serpent. Time winters here. We should not race. An author, journalist, and father, Kushal Poddar, editor of 'Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated into eleven languages.

These days she would accept all or any correspondence. His utterances are a dying dialect. The last thing he had told her was ‘I do not belong here’ and she did not know if he meant with her in their house or in this ordinary sleepover town or both and her heart had hurt. His music gnaws at her defences, catapulting its explicit lyrics through his keyhole to worry her as she tidies adjacent rooms. She occupies herself to feign control, a steadying of a quaking edifice. She knows he has been kissed by darkness; she has stepped inside his soul. She has leaned into the most expensive gradients of his moods, the ones which cost them everything. She blames herself. If only she had not been so scattered in her twenties, if only she had married a shy guy and not a bully with a wolfish stare. He has his father’s eyes. Polished sapphires of aquamarine she once believed she could see her reflection in. ‘How bizarre and beautiful,’ she had said when they had visited The Great Wall of China. He had informed her at 10 years old that it had been subject to man-made hurt for years, bricks stolen and portions vandalised and destroyed. She had felt that pillage too, the ramparts reduced. She had seen her future. On his 15th birthday, he had called her ‘Mom’ for the last time. It had been a comment about her road rage that had lifted his snarl into a smirk. At 16, she had found garments she did not recognise under his bed. Dialogue had failed, an impasse in situ. Four months later he received his first ride in a police car. She had fished fistfuls of cash she had given him from his pocket before washing his jeans. She knew he did not need to steal the sportswear but he did. Two months afterwards she made some calls and tried sending him off grid. She never read remorse in his expression, just awareness of her ill-fitting deceit. She had struggled to breathe. He had viewed her gasps from a distant shore before drowning his hands in his pockets and slamming the door. The ambulance operator had to trace the call, she was found in the hallway. The same hallway she had stood in when she practised for the conversation roulette. The calendar was affixed to the mirror waiting for the days to rearrange themselves until he would return. At 17 years and 264 days there was a girl. Her boots left blood lust streaks of mud on the floors. There was no interaction. It did not last. At 18 she tries to re-establish some semblance of normality but it soon becomes clear that she is a banana grove and he is a tamarin ravenous for a plate full of oranges. And then it is there like a floodlight shining on the cemetery of their years of dark nights. Its pincers are magnificent, so honest and committed. Its body is a mass of bronzed ripples and she is afraid the warmth of her gaze will startle it. He tells her that they use them to restrain and kill their prey. She does not care. Today does not need to bow to tomorrow’s tomorrowness. When he called her, he had held her arm and pulled her close as they had ascended the stairs together to where they are now, peering together into a toilet bowl. ‘Mom, can you help me save it?’, his words are blanched of any molten fragments, their edges softened. She wonders if it is a venomous scorpion. The thought is a struck match in the centre of her mind. She cannot lose him again. She knows its stinger is also known as a telson; she briefly marvels how circumstance has transformed its fiery dagger into their armament to repossess the greatest thing man has ever known. She feels dispossessed of further choices and with that comes the enclosure of relief. Her love for him feels newly secured in the moment and like a flag unfurls itself to iron out its creases in this strident breeze. ‘Of course, I will help you. I have always wanted to.’ Her hope is prone to being caducous, having been schooled by disappointment but his smile has knocked through those walls. Later, she will learn that her receptiveness, her thinly-veiled eagerness had handed him the mallet. ‘I am sorry, Mom. I am sorry you’ve waited so long.’ Together their laughter is a collage; it develops into the afternoon like a photograph alters in purest darkness from shiny and soulless to a crisp rectangle of light. Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She writes bi-lingually in English and Irish. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, Reflex Press, Ink Sweat &Tears, Ellipsis Zine, Tiny Molecules, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Books Ireland, Splonk, Flash Boulevard, Janus Literary & more. Her poem ‘Embezzled Emotion’ published in Janus Literary received a Best of the Net nomination 2023. You can find her on Twitter @abairrud2021.

The eleventh month After the all the casting and the punditry We return to our yards: manicured and plain, Ignore the stray wrappers along our curb Hope that the steady rain can sweep it up. But it’s difficult to return to the ways of before With this sad mist, this late rain without life. Our great hopes have become trash in the drain; No children parade in fanciful attire. Our relationships never so needed repair. The marital bed is dry and sleeps on one side. A fictional exercise has failed, a reiteration In the iteration of tricks and threats. Who can fill the vacant lots of our desire? That aspiration to devotion for fulfillment In the primal sense, without commentary. Blood, emotion like raw nerve, still craving A quavering in throaty tones inconsiderate Of the infinite consequence. The type that will Require the children parading in fanciful attire To dry beds, by green grass, asking to be fed. Reserve A strong woman started a fire in the rain. I ran through the remnants of a hurricane In a season of immeasurable drought. There were sand dunes in the Mississippi and exposed wreckage And since I couldn’t explore that river, once a hundred miles wide, I explored the thoughts in my own head. My trail crossed the dry ravines that had cut down Guarding hills and once created a preserving swamp. She was here and there, Running down a side creek, Smoking on her front porch Not enclosed like the others. She smiled and waved Not like a beauty in a parade But like she wanted me Like we could satiate us, At least till the rain passed And our spouses returned. I hadn’t known even that Passing gratification, Cheap by some standards Expensive by others, In years. Early frost had killed the mosquitoes, The bushes shed their protection, I stood in the center of the swamp Wondering How long. Dave Nash enjoys taking mass transit into the city on rainy Mondays. Dave reads fiction submissions at Five South Magazine and writes stories that can be found in places like Bivouac Magazine and Unstamatic.

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In the rearview he watches the couple arguing. He adjusts the mirror and leans back, a wide-screen performance just for him. The woman is throwing her arms around, gesticulating madly and flailing about inside the tiny car behind him. Her dude smokes an e-cig, blowing fumes out the window, oblivious to how stupid he looks sucking on the silver dildo. It’s too fascinating and difficult to turn away from: the woman is all emotion, flickering between intimate sadness and sheer outrage, while the dude displays complete indifference to it all. The couple behind him are in the midst of something final. He’s always felt a certain satisfaction in witnessing the endings of things, as long as they’re not his own endings, maybe. There’s an impossible itch on his finger, just beneath his wedding band. The highway is a clogged artery. Everyone else is angry, too. It’s hot—an overcast but still-sizzling sort of September afternoon—and vehicles are barely more than stranded monoliths on the blacktop, some of them idling in defiance, horns blaring for no real reason. The radio says a logging truck tipped over five miles up the highway. Logs all over the road. At first he laughed to himself, remembering some old joke about two logging trucks passing one another on the road; one going one way, the other coming from there. The punchline was something along the lines of, Why deliver logs if you already have logs? It’s not funny anymore though, not after sitting here for an hour. Now it’s personal. He hopes that someone died up ahead to make this backup worth it. It’s only a passing idea floating through him, but still, he questions his sanity a little for having had such a dark, unfair thought in the first place. He switches from the news back to satellite radio, catching the tail end of Gavin Rossdale growling on about Zen, or a lack thereof. Car horns continue to honk all around him. Looking back to the mirror, the couple behind him is still fighting. She clearly mouths an exasperated Fuck! and her face falls into her own waiting hands. He wishes he knew the details of what else was being discussed. If only he could read lips. The woman, she certainly has a lot to say, though he wonders how much of it is simply repeating the same points? Around and around. Arguments tend to work that way, he’s noticed. Especially as they get closer to the end. She’s trying to remain in control, but is visibly shaking, weeping. A breeze whistles by, blowing the grass on the side of the highway. How does the green grass continue to live and grow out here in this hopeless stretch of land? It seems impossible to him. Something furry darts through the grass, wild, and not affected at all by traffic jams. The entire song ends before anyone on the road has made another inch of progress. He hits the Previous Track button to listen to it again. When he looks back up into the mirror, the car behind him is making a reckless U-turn through some rocks and grass, and crosses over into the northbound lane. Some of the flying rocks ricochet off the side of his car. The dude’s car is already a mile away when he spots the woman standing alone on the highway. She holds herself, the hot day’s dust sticking to her wet cheeks. He’s opening the passenger door and waving her over before he even realizes he’s waving her over. She climbs in. There’s a moment—if bottled, it would surely be a moment worth examining for generations—where her stop-motion tears say nearly everything that needs to be said. No further evidence is necessary. She wears linen pants and a jean jacket, frayed all over. He almost asks if she was in a fight, if that’s why the jacket is all torn up, but then realizes that of course his jokey comment would only be misinterpreted, and she’d be getting out of her second car in as many minutes. Instead, he asks her if she’s all right. She says, I had a dream about this accident, you know? Like a precognitive vision. I knew this was going to happen but got into his fucking car anyway. I guess instead of finding opportunities to avoid the tough conversations and inevitable conclusions, I found a way for us to have no alternative. He doesn’t know a thing about precognizance, but she has lovely hands he notices, as she holds them tightly, restraining herself from flailing them around like she’d done while arguing with her boyfriend. Husband. Or whatever he was to her. He asks again, But you’re all right? There are crystalline cracks breaking through the stratocumulus clouds above. Thin, silver grins of unknown intent. She says, Something’s not right. My doctor hasn’t gotten back to me yet with the test results. They all think it’s brain cancer, I know they do. I know it isn’t. Who do you think would know better, really? I do have a mole on my leg that I’m worried about. I didn’t mention the mole to my doctor. It didn’t even occur to me to ask him about it, but that’s going to happen when someone says the words ‘brain cancer’ to your face a few times. You’re going to forget things. The mole is on my inner thigh. I’d show you but I don’t think that’s appropriate. It’s pretty high up. I can feel it right now. See? Right here, right under my pants. Something is going to kill me—kill us all—in the end though. It honestly doesn’t matter if we lose all the antidepressants and calcium and vitamin D supplements and antibiotics and L-thyroxine; we’re still going to get sick, aren’t we? None of that shit matters. Finally, she wipes her eyes, looks in the rearview herself, maybe checking to see if the dude is coming back. He’s an asshole. He told me it must be brain cancer, too. And what am I supposed to do with that? She turns to him now, maybe for the first time. He thinks her forehead is really pretty. What do I do with that? His hands still grip the wheel, at the 11:55 and the 12:05 positions. He covers up the ring on his finger with his other hand, and suggests some things were maybe not ever meant. Not meant? Meant to BE, I should have said. She says, We all started off happy, each and every one of us. Otherwise, why would we have gotten involved in these things in the first place? What would the point have been? He flicks the same song back to the start for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time now. He’s lost count. He confesses he was on his way to sign the divorce papers, though he’s never going to make it now because of the logs all over the highway somewhere up ahead there. She suggests, Maybe you had a vision of the accident, too? And here you are now, right in the middle of this mess, enabling your other mess to continue on. At some point, you need to step out of that car in the middle of the highway. Metaphorically. Horns continue to blare as she processes her own conclusions to her own observations. Shit. I forgot my bag in his car. Things never seem to end so easily, he says. There’s always a bit of a mess left behind. Thanks for listening, she says. Hey, do you think anyone died up there? He looks at her and they both laugh just a little. I sure hope so. R. Tim Morris writes short fiction, longer fiction, novels, flash fic, and poetry. He writes in different genres, mostly literary fiction, but I've been known to write Speculative, Magical Realism, Dark Fantasy, and even Adult Humor. He can be found on Twitter @RyMo89 or at his Website rtimmorris.com.